TRANSPARENCIES FOR ORNAMENTAL LANTERN.
An ornamental lantern fitted with transparencies is a pretty and inexpensive Christmas gift, and may be quickly and easily made by any member of our club who owns a scroll-saw. For the sides of the lantern make a pretty open-work design, and in the centre of each panel cut a square large enough to admit a glass the size of a lantern slide (3½ by 4). Select negatives which have plenty of detail and are of good printing quality. Make four transparencies, using either the sensitive plates which come for that purpose, or making tinted transparencies according to directions given in Nos. 857 and 863. The tinted transparencies are more ornamental, but the black and white are pretty. These transparencies are fitted in the panels, and the lantern is then put together.
If one does not know how to make transparencies, almost the same effect may be produced by applying a print to plain glass, using the cover glasses made for lantern slides, and then removing the paper, leaving the film only on the glass. Directions for this process may be found in No. 878. If one has used landscape negatives, a piece of pale blue paper placed over the sky part, and a piece of green back of the landscape, will have the effect of a colored transparency when the tiny lantern inside is lighted. A small alcohol-lamp serves for the lighting, and will burn for several hours. If one has a sunset view showing fine clouds, place a faint rose-color or violet-tinted paper back of the sky, and when the lantern is lighted the colors are like those of a real sunset, the shadows and high lights in the clouds, making the different tones and shades of color. Of course if viewed in a strong light this way of coloring would be too crude, but in the faint light of the lamp it is not noticed.
In selecting pictures for the lantern, choose those which will be familiar to the one for whom the gift is designed, as half the value of a photograph is in its being a picture of some well-known place or object.
Blue transparencies show off well in a lantern of this description. Directions for making them were given some time ago, but we print another formula for the benefit of those who have not a copy of the number containing the first, and who might wish to make a lantern with blue transparencies.