Chandelier Tutorial
Apr 8, 2011 by Violet
Project Make-My-Bedroom-Nicer is in full swing now and over last weekend I made my biggest project so far:
A chandelier!
I’ve wanted a chandelier since I was a little kid ^_^ The bedroom is taking a kind of romantic silver/gold/black damask theme to it so I figured that this would be the perfect accompaniment.
What you need:
When we first moved in here I bought this clothes airer thing and it’s legs broke almost right away >_< I didn’t keep the receipt though so I was stuck with the damn thing. So I thought long and hard about what I could do with it and the only thing I thought of was chandelier! Let’s get to work ^_^
From the top you can see it has 8 arms and is the perfect shape for a project like this.
First thing to do is to remove all the pegs and plastic chains.
Next it’s time to paint it. I decided to aim for silver and black and I wanted the main colour to be silver. I didn’t have any paint spare so I used some nail polish the lovely BGDino sent me :D
It took 2 coats to get it looking silvery which amounted to around 1/4 of the bottle. Totally worth it :D
Make sure to let it dry completely between coats no matter what kind of paint you’re using. You might want to undercoat it for a perfect finish but I figure that it’s very high up so it’s not going to have much wear and tear and also no one is going to see it closely XD
Don’t forget the bottom too!
Now lay out the jewels you have. I used large clear ones and smaller pink ones as well as a couple of little star beads.
The large clear ones were old Christmas decorations I got on sale from Borders and already had fishing line threaded through to hang them with.
The pink ones I bought from a closing down bead shop so I threaded them with matching blue/silver cotton to hang them.
Each ring will have the same jewels hanging at the same lengths so make sure to cut the threads evenly.
Each arm has 4 threads of jewels hanging at different lengths. This is the order of jewels I used for each arm:
Hang the jewels from the hooks and you should start to see everything taking shape!
At this point I hung mine up from a clothes rack so I could work on it more easily. To hold it up I just hooked some of the chain through the top and looped it around the rack.
At this point I thought it needed something to make it more impressive. So time for damask!
Cut out sections of damask which at tall like this, they are going to take the place of candles ^_^
Fold in half…
And cut out the insides!
Glue each of the “candles” to the ends of the arm parts.
To make a center piece I cut out 4 of these little butterfly shapes from the paper and glued them so there was damask on both sides of two pieces.
Then cut half the way down the top middle on one of them and half way up the bottom of the other and slot together!
From the top it should look like a cross like this:
Glue in some chain or matching ribbon in the middle for the whole thing to hang from.
This is how it looks hanging so far:
Now add in the center piece on a thread from the middle with a big jewel from the bottom.
Add drapes of chain to the first hanging points…
And drapes of yarn knotted at each loop around the outside…
Snip off any loose ends of the threads…
Hang that sucker up because you are done!
Now it’s probably not fit to hang in my imaginary multimillion dollar Swiss chalet but it sure cheers up my current bedroom ^_^
Once I can get some more supplies I’m planning to add more jewels and more dangly chains so it looks absolutely awesome. This is still a pretty good start though I think ^_^
Hard to photograph clear jewels and get in the epic sparkle of the silver but so pretty in person!
And so there you have it!
I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial as much as I enjoy watching the jewels spin around at night ^_^ |
Love this, as usual! Too bad a have a dang overhead fan so a chandelier would only get in the way (or the fan would get it the way of the chandelier). Either way, this was very helpful and very crafty! I’ll have to find a way to incorporate this into my room somehow…
I’m glad you enjoyed it anyway!
PEARLS!!!!
YES!! Going to have to get some!
Absolutely stunning. I wish I didn’t have such a ‘blokey’ bedroom. Maybe I can make one and turn it towards the girly side. You are such an inspiration
Thank you so much Cat! I think I’m really lucky that James doesn’t mind me making out house girly XD
Maybe..you can cover the center part of the hanger with da mask wrapping paper? It still looks like a hanger because of the center part =) just a suggestion though. Excellent idea ! =)
Thanks for the suggestion Rene! I did test out covering the middle with the paper but it looked out of place. I’ll have to cover it with pearls or something else pretty. Great idea!
Aaah!
It’s so pretty <3.
Thank you!
Hard to believe that started life as a washing hanger upper thingy :-P Very nice……I might give this one a go!!
Haha yes! Remaking things into completely different things= my favorite kind of craft!
:D how cool! Such a cool idea!
Thanks!
(busy catching up on things I missed when I was on holiday)
This is awesome, and I’m re-decorating so I may have to give this a try :D
Hope you had a good holiday!
Absolutely love this! As I was looking at the pics, my mind was racing with ideas. Thank you for sharing! You have such a great imagination :)
I found this on stumbleupon & thought could you use a very low watt light bulb & feed it through the middle? On a pretty cord of course.
Thanks for commenting Sheila! That’s a great idea :D
haha i know this is an old post, but that’s such a smart idea! I always wanted a chandelier as well, so I’ll definitely try this once I can get my hands on these materials :3
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:D Thank you! I hope it goes well for you!
Hahaha what a good idea!
Thank you :D