March brings us a step closer to Spring and with it the advent of cook outs and bonfires. While I'm a much bigger fan of seeing the city blanketed in silencing frost, I don't mind a cook out, because that means brats & beer! So I also got to thinking about tiki torches (of last summer's cook outs) and lanterns which got me to thinking of this challenge! I know Kellz had a rough go this last week but she's a total hardcore trooper and busted out some hot lantern-ness anyway!
While I don't think this is really a backyard cook out type of decoration, I do have a thing for mausoleums, where this would fit right in! I really wanted to go in the direction of morbid, but not conventional morbid, so I had the decorative skull motif on the left hand face which would be repeated on three sides of this lantern. I patterned the lower half of the skull from an amulet of a hand I remember seeing a long time ago. The face of the lantern on the right is meant to be where one would insert the candle. The hands folded in prayer comprise the two halves of the door. Also on this side is a continuation of the skull pattern on the top half. While the previous side contained a stylised third eye, closed, on the side that prays the third eye is now open in illumination and gazing upward.
As a side note, I did a little googling to see if I could find the amulet I was thinking of and it must have been a Hamsa Amulet. It has an eye in the palm and is a symbol to ward of evil. Hmm...
