Transform a flea market fixture into a custom lighting element.
Chandeliers add formality and luxury to living spaces, and their price tags often reflect those qualities, with unusual, colorful and elaborately adorned chandeliers fetching even higher amounts. You can save money by customizing an inexpensive but operational standard candelabra-style chandelier from a yard sale, thrift store or flea market by painting it to match your space and adding whimsical elements such as coiled beaded wire, glass beads or paper flowers.
Instructions
1. Lay out your plastic tarp over your work area. Work outdoors if possible, since spray paint fumes indoors can be overwhelming. Remove any crystals or other attached decorative elements. Unscrew any light bulbs, and apply tape over the openings at the tops of the bulb sleeves and over the wire and chain.
2. Place your prepped chandelier on the tarp, and apply an even coat of spray primer. Allow the primer to dry, then flip over the fixture. Spray any areas you missed with your first pass. Allow the newly primed areas to dry.
3. Spray your chandelier with the metal-surface spray paint, and add a second coat of paint if necessary. Allow the paint to dry.
4. Customize the chandelier shades as you wait for your fixture to dry. Peel off the template from a shade. You'll notice the shade's surface is sticky; you'll just attach the fabric you cut out directly against this sticky surface. Place the template over your fabric, trace around it with the chalk, and cut out the template. Attach the template to the sticky shade. Repeat this process for as many shades as you have to cover.
5. Create a custom, decorative cord cover. Working on your ironing board, measure your chandelier's chain length, and then double that length. Cut out a 6-inch-wide strip of fabric at that length. Lay the fabric strip pattern or colored side up, and then fold it lengthwise, creating a long, thinner strip.
6. Place an equally long length of hem tape just inside the two meeting fabric edges. Heat up your iron and apply it to the fabric over where you inserted the heat-fusible tape. Allow the fused tape to cool, then turn the tube you just made inside-out. Now the pattern or colored side is showing again. Feed the chain through the fabric tube, scrunching the tube to create a ruffled effect.
7. Wrap the bulb sleeves with beaded wire or ribbon, or leave them painted. Attach beads, crystals and small sculptural elements with wire. Reattach the chandelier bulbs and push the shades onto them .
Tags: beaded wire, bulb sleeves, colored side, flea market, over your, pattern colored, pattern colored side