Cricut Lantern FREE SVG šŸ¦‰ 3D Snowy Owl Craft Project

3D Snowy Owl Craft Project

Make an incredible slot-together lantern with your Cricut machine!

This snowy owl craft project is hung with string or ribbon and looks beautiful when lit up with battery tealights, submersible lights or fairy lights.

See how to make 3D luminaries in this tutorial, including the best type of lights to use to illuminate them.

3D Snowy Owl Craft Project

Video tutorial for snowy owl luminaries

Watch the video below to see how to make this light-up craft project. Keep scrolling for a written tutorial.

Materials list for slot-together snowy owl

Here is a list of the materials that you will need to make this craft project.

Please note that some of the links included in this article are affiliate links, which means that if you click through and make a purchase I may receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). You can read my full disclosure at the bottom of the page.

In order to make this snowy owl lantern large enough to fit a battery-powered tea light, you need to use 12×12 inch cardstock.

You can make the design smaller to fit smaller lights. You will need to make it smaller to cut the design on a Cricut Joy Xtra machine. This project is not well suited to the original Joy machines (the small blue machines).

What lights work best inside the lanterns?

Never use a real flame/candle as your lantern will catch fire!!

Instead, choose battery powered lights.

As you are putting the light in an enclosed space with the walls made from cardstock, it is essential that you choose lights that do NOT get warm during use.

Option 1: Battery powered tea lights

This lantern has been designed to perfectly fit a battery powered tealight inside. This is a nice option to add, especially if you choose one with a flickering effect.

However, they do not give off much light, so the other lighting options below may be more effective.

Find battery powered tea lights on Amazon

Option 2: Submersible LED lights

This is my favourite lighting option. These tiny little lights come with a remote control to change the colour. You can even make your own disco light show by having them flash or fade through all the different colours!

Find submersible lights on Amazon

Option 3: Fairy lights

Putting a string of fairy lights inside the lanterns gives the brightest overall effect.

However, as they are quite large and take up lots of room, you can see the edges of the strings of lights when you look at the lanterns from certain angles, so it is perhaps not the neatest of options.

Choose lights with small battery packs and make sure you unravel/unwrap the lights from the battery pack before using them, for safety reasons.

Find fairy lights on Amazon

3D snowy owl lantern instructions

Step 1) Upload the SVG into Design Space

Download the free file using the box below and unzip the downloaded folder.

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You may sell finished, handmade physical craft items that you have made using this product but must not sell or share the digital files. Read full terms of use

Before you upload the SVG to Design Space, you need to unzip the download folder that it comes in.

Find the unzipped version of the download folder and select the filed called svg-lantern-snowy-owl-craftwithsarah.svg

Make sure you upload the file which starts svg- in the filename!!

After you’ve selected the design, click “Continue”.

You don’t need to change anything on the next screen – just press “Upload” and the design will be added straight to your Canvas.

The entire size of the owl lantern should be 11.5 inches wide and 21.5 inches tall (or near enough).

You don’t need to make any changes to the file in Design Space – it loads in all ready to cut!

Most of the design will be cut from cardstock, but there are some exceptions.

The blue shapes that appear at the bottom of the file should be cut from a translucent material such as vellum, tracing paper or butcher paper.

If you don’t have anything semi-transparent then a full transparent material such as acetate or the cover of an old Cricut mat would work too, but it won’t be quite as effective as you will see the light mechanisms inside the lantern.

I used the “Light cardstock” setting to cut my tracing paper. Be careful when taking it off your Cricut mat as the tiny triangle cutouts along the bottoms can cause them to tear. It’s easier to remove them from the top side that doesn’t have the triangle cutouts.

Step 2) Stick the window panels together

Turn the window panels upside down so you are looking at the bottom side.

Carefully add a small amount of glue around the edges and glue the vellum pieces to the backs. The side of the vellum with a tiny triangle cutout is the side to put along the bottom of the window panel (it’s slightly wider than the top).

Step 3) Create the lantern structure

My best tip when making this type of lantern is to assemble the lantern structure BEFORE adding on the layered cardstock details. It is MUCH easier to put the lantern together first.

However, in this case I glued the two tail layers on first, but you could do that after making the lantern structure if you prefer.

Select the lantern structure piece that has two little cutouts along the top and bottom.

Slot this into the owl body piece.

Hold those two pieces flat against each other and slide the third lantern structure piece into the middle.

You’ll now have a six-sided structure.

Take the largest of the two circles and slot it into the bottom of the lantern structure.

The small slits in the side of the circle will so into the slits in the bottom of the lantern.

This part can be a bit fiddly, so go slowly and be careful not to tear the cardstock.

Slot the smaller circle into the top of the lantern structure.

Step 4) Stick the cardstock layers together

Use a combination of glue and foam pads/squares to stick all the pieces of card together that make up the wings and face of the owl.

Use the assembly guide below to see the order to stick the pieces in, and whether to use glue or foam for each one.

I found it easiest to stick all the pieces together BEFORE adding it onto the lantern design as then I could work on a flat work-surface.

Step 5) Finish the lantern

Glue the wings to the lantern.

Slot five of the six side panels into the lantern.

The rounded tabs go into the top of the lantern and the flat-edge tabs go into the bottom.

Add your light inside, turn it on, then put in the final side panel.

The side panels can easily be unhooked to turn the light off.

I added a colour-changing submersible light inside the owl. It looked much better in “real life” than it did on camera as sadly my camera was struggling to pick up on the light glowing inside.

Finally, add some thread, ribbon or twine through the hole at the top so that you can hang up the snowy owl lantern.

Free 3D slot-together SVGs

If you like this snowy owl Cricut lantern, you may want to check out these other FREE slot-together designs:

You can also find LOTS more lantern designs in my SVG shop. I’ve got a collection of other birds similar to this snowy owl, including an eagle and falcon, with more being added soon.

There are lots of different dog breeds too, and even a Highland cow!

Find more 3D lantern SVGs

Love layered SVGs? Check out my other free layered SVG files

Happy crafting,
Sarah x