Faux Capiz Shell Chandelier

This post will be short and sweet, since I found an awesome tutorial that explains it all perfectly.

My dining room lighting was ugly. It was bothering my eyes every time I was in that space. I wish I took a picture to show you what an eyesore it was. But it had to come done ASAP. I took it apart and immediately felt better, but I had no idea what I was going to replace it with... the ceiling was just there, light-less for about a week.

I went to a few stores and nothing stuck out enough for my to buy. I saw this tutorial floating around a while ago on faux capiz shell chandeliers and I noted it, but didn't have motivation at the time, and was also indecisive on what I wanted.

Well, after a week of no lighting and squinting my eyes to read under my lamps, I found motivation. This project is time consuming, but well worth it, I think.

I know DIY is not anything new, it was posted in 2010. I'm late to the DIY circuit, sheesh where have I been?

Design*Sponge -Tutorial

I caution you to not use a circle punch (this was mentioned in the tutorial, but I was stubborn) wax paper does not return great results with this tool.  My circle punch and I got in a fight, I barely made 30 circles in about an hour. Too long. Good thing I had a 50% coupon for JoAnn's this month and purchased a Martha Stewart Circle Cutter - it worked awesome. Sorry circle punch - you're fired.

I was able to cut through four sheets at a time - making the second round much quicker! My rate was about 60 circles per four sheet stacks - I was ready to sew em together in an hour.

Materials needed. Not pictured: Iron/ironing board, hot glue gun,
sewing machine

I didn't use ribbon as the tutorial shows, but I saw examples of others where people used a sewing machine to link the capiz "shells" together. I liked that better. It was easy, you just feed the circles through one behind the other. I made a few really long chains and cut them into increments of 5 when I was done with sewing them together.

I used a 10" hanging garden basket from WalMart I got for $2. I also did not paint it since, I forgot about that step, and I did not have any paint on hand. Oh well! I thought about getting a bigger basket, but man, you have to cut a lot of circles for this one!

Approx. 250 circles later .... Let there be LIGHT!!!

Dining room progress!

























Total cost for me: $18

• New basic ceiling light canopy $6 (I tried to disassemble the old one, turned out it was attached to the pendant, dang it)
• Circle Cutter $10 (50% off)
• Basket $2

It looks very chic with my dining table, I am very happy for my newly found motivation to make this. Thanks Design*Sponge for your awesomeness!