Fancy Schmancy Chandelier

A while ago (probably 4-5 months) while at my local Anthro store, I saw this lovely thing.

Another piece of inspiration was this picture that keeps showing up on Pinterest.  If you haven't joined that cult, you are really missing out!  I just love the color combination of teal and copper.  Really anything with copper right now.  Who knew?


So now to the project!!! I figured that what ever I decided to use on my chandelier had to be cheap.  Really cheap.  Plastic beads are cheap right?  And ribbon from the dollar store couldn't really get any cheaper.  But I've never seen copper beads that are cheap.  That's an easy fix.  I bought bags and bags of these 12mm faceted beads for about $2.50 each and strung them up on some yarn that I already had on hand.  Add some metallic copper spray paint.....




Ta Da!! Copper beads!  Once they dried I strung them onto my ribbon that I picked up at the dollar store, I think they were about $1 each.  I used my thumb to space out the beads and the thickness of the ribbon just kind of keeps the beads where they are, it really couldn't be any easier.  Here they are so far, I think I need a few more spools of ribbon from the dollar store.


Making the base was a different story but here is what eventually worked for me.  It's made out of an old lamp shade that I picked up from goodwill for a cool $.50! After tearing off the paper shade, I spray painted the wire pieces.  To attach them, I used some crochet thread that I already had.  The tricky part was making sure the 3 strands were even so that the bottom would hang evenly.  How, you ask?  I dampened the string slightly so that it would lay smoothly on a flat surface and then just made a mark on both ends with a sharpie pen.  Then I just lined up the mark with the metal hoops and tied a double knot.  Use a little super glue to make sure they hold if you feel like it, I did.  you can also pick up an extra metal hoop from the craft store to hold the support strings in a little so that when you cover it with strands of beast they are kept inside.  (just a continuity note, I cut off part of the lamp shade support that goes around the light socket, I figured out a better way to hand the finished product and no longer needed it.






Right now I need to get some more ribbon, but I'll be back next week with a finished product.  Pinky promise.

P.S. are you on pinterest yet?