Redneck Chandelier

Let there be light!

Our first apartment is a wonderful little place - large windows, spacious bedrooms, a full bath and kitchen.... and overhead lighting in every room. Except the living room, where most of our studying/socializing happens. My husband and I have spent a lot of time looking into solutions for this lack of light. Even with a tall floor lamp, the room is dingy at best when the sun goes down. And since we live on the ground floor, we're not comfortable leaving our blinds or curtains open for long periods of time.

I was Pinspired by hula hoops, initially. I was worried that the hula hoop left something to be desired in the way of providing useful luminescence. Instead, I forged ahead and recycled some of the embroidery hoops from our wedding. I think that the completion of this craft leaves about more 70 hoops! Woohoo!

The first task was determining how to arrange the hoops. Should I use 6 or 8?

I chose 6 in the end. The goal was to attach a string of white lights to the "frame" of embroidery hoops. I thought that though the 8-hoop frame was more visually appealing, the 6-hoop frame would be easier to fill with lights.

Using superglue, I created 2 triads of hoops (only the solid inner circle). I used clips to hold the points of contact together until the glue dried. Wood glue would have been more appropriate for this purpose, but I had superglue on hand.

The triads were spray painted white and allowed to dry. Then I used superglue to affix the them together at juxtaposed angles. I did not take a picture of the final 6-hoop frame, but it looked exactly like the earlier picture when they were just laid out.

Finding white string lights in the middle of August is difficult. With the help of my wonderful house guest, Ryan, we found some icicle lights at Menard's. I wasn't planning on using icicle lights because of their bulk and branching, but the small icicles actually made it easy to run lights along all surfaces of the frame. The lights were attached with white electric tape. Almost any strong tape could be used. The benefit of electric tape was that we could reposition lights easily as needed.

With the lights firmly attached and the plug located in the center, it was ready to go! Ryan used more electric tape in an attempt to wrap the outside edges of the frame. Though it disguises the wire, I don't find it to be any prettier.

Three wires were affixed to the frame. Each wire had two points of contact, located where the superglue was applied to form the triads. These inner points were chosen because the traction broke the delicate frame when the wires were attached to the outer edges. A small piece of wire looped together the 3 pieces supporting the chandelier and the extension cord supplying power.

This is now tacked to our ceiling with plastic cable staples. I had no idea what these were before starting this project, but the wonderful workers at Home Depot helped me find them. At our apartment, we're allowed to put nail holes in the walls (and ceilings, too!). If anyone else cannot do this, there are other options that use adhesive pads similar to Command products that would be suitable. The staples are easy to install, hold the weight of the chandelier, hold the extension cord tightly to the ceiling, and are pretty cheap. Additionally, the U of the staple allows me to adjust the chandelier wires when it tilts slightly due to an uneven weight distribution (I'm not THAT good).

Isn't it pretty? Well, pretty enough anyways. It provides enough light to read by, but it still counts as "mood lighting" in my book. Bonus - I was able to surprise my husband with this when he came home from work. I'm horrible with keeping surprises secret, but I pulled this one off and he loves it.