Fancy Schmancy Chandelier Completed!

It's finished!!!

I know finishing this has been long overdue.  You could virtually break my pinky because I broke my pinky promise (note to self, no more pinky promises), but we went on a road trip vacation (here and here), I was sick, both of my arms were broken, and all my fingers.  Umm, some of that may or may not be true.  Anyway when I last left off it looked something like this.  (You can see those steps here.)

Next up was to get the light parts so that it would be functional.  I picked up this old 80's dream for a steal, $5 to be exact.  I have since seen about a million of these around various thrift stores. I also found out that the small hoop from my lamp shade fit almost exactly inside of one of the transition pieces on top, so I pulled that off and the actual chandelier part from the inside.  I took them outside and turned them from brass, to copper with a little bit of the same spray paint that I used on the beads.  I didn't get a before picture prior to taking it all apart picture, but here is what is left of it.

Now jump back the the strands of beaded.  Once I was done stringing beads on a bunch of strands of ribbon I simply sewed the end of the ribbon to the smaller hoop at the top.  I took the time to make sure I had them evenly distributed between the 3 strands of yarn so that my finished project would be pretty even.  That was a complete waste of time, but more on that later.  Once I had all the ribbons attached I mixed up some Gorilla Glue epoxy and glued the hoop inside of a cap that was part of the original chandelier that I purchased.

Let that sit for a  while to harden up, then put the chandelier part inside.  Using a clamp and our railing in the living room I was able to have it hanging for the rest of the assembly.  This is where things became tricky.  I had a terrible time keeping the lower hoop level.  The strands of ribbon would slide around to one side and even when I was able to spread them out evenly it never stayed.  Kinda like this.

So to make the process even longer I decided to hot glue each strand to the lower hoop.  I Measured the diameter of the hoop and divided it by the number of strands that I had and came up with 1.5 inches between each.  AND I also spaced out the strands of yarn holding up the lower hoop evenly too (waste of time).  This was a little tedious but didn't take forever.  Holding ribbon, a hot glue gun and a tape measure all at once was a little difficult.  Then try to photograph it.

Now things are starting to come together.  Or so I thought.  Finding the best way to gather the bottom and attach it to the bottom of the chandelier required a bit of trial and error.  Mostly trial.  First I measured the length of the ribbon so that they would all be even (which was a good thing) and stuck a needle and thread through each.  It ended up looking like an ugly pony tail at the bottom.

Then I decided that maybe I should have the tails pointing upward instead so that it would look nicer.

Which did look nicer than an ugly pony tail hanging down so I went with it for a while.  I even went as far s cutting off the pony tail, adding super glue to the nub and  failing to attach it to the bottom of the chandelier.  So I undid what was left of the pony tail and thought overlapping the ribbon from one side to the other would give me a flatter result.  So I measured the length once again and sewed the ribbons together, but more neatly this time.  As you might notice, there is a hoop and some yarn missing.  Well when I was trying to connect everything at the bottom, it just kept looking lopsided.  While fiddling around with the length of the yarn, one strand broke.  Not really wanting to fix it I just removed the other 2 strands and the medium hoop and things started to look a little better.  Bob would call that a 'Happy Accident'.

Now all I needed was to attach this to the bottom of the chandelier.  I made another quick trip to Home Depot (why is Josh Temple never there?) to pick up to largish washers.  I sprayed them with the copper paint and used the epoxy glue to sandwich them around the sewn together ribbon tails.  Once it had dried I used an exacto knife and cut the ribbon out of the middle.  It ended up like this.

Then I just unscrewed the little fancy nut off the bottom of the chandelier, this is where all the wiring is housed, swapped out the nipple for a longer one (you know, to accommodate all the fabric and 2 washers).  Then I just slid the washers over the nipple and screwed the fancy nut thing back on and voila!  Donezo.

Here it is again!  I think it looks pretty fantastic.  I may be partially biased, but who cares.  And here is a quick shot of it during the day.

So, whatcha think?  Do you love lighting as much as I do?  Would you ever try to DIY your own fancy light? Have you already?  If so, let's see what you got!

-Nikki

I am linking up to Tatertots & Jello's Weekend Wrap Up Party