DIY Lampshade Chandelier!

Hello lovelies! Today I'm writing to you about this lamp chandelier that I have finally finished!!!

Here's what you'll need:
4 thrift store lamp shades
4 light bulb cords (the cord that is holding of the lampshades and holds the lightbulbs)
1 piece of wood
strong enough rope to hold at least 50 pounds
2 Hook screws that will go into your ceiling (weight average over 50 pounds as well)
Wire Strippers
Electrical box
Extension Cord
A box of doodads (I'll include a photo)
Exposed wire protectors
Electrical tape
Wire cutters
And a little bit of determination!

                                   these are doodads, I have no idea what their real name is.

Alright before we get down to all the details about this lamp project, I wanted to go over the basics for electrical wiring. I used to be really intimated by this but once you learn these two essential rules it will broaden your craft horizons!
1. Never ever ever ever wire different colored wires together. Ever. All you have to do is keep like colors with like colors. In this particular project my white wires were with white and black with black.
2. You never want exposed wire touching any sort of metal.

Those two rules will keep you from creating an electrical short...which is where the power goes out.

Now for the rest!
I had a left over piece of wood hanging around from when we built my dining table so I snatched that up and painted it with a couple different layers of colors we had laying around.

Then I drilled 4 holes thick enough to feed the cords through with some room.

I took off all the fabric on the 4 lamp shades I bought from a thrift store for about $10 total.

I fed the four corded light bulb strands (from ikea) through the lamp shades after cutting the male plug piece off. Then fed that through the holes in my 2x4.
I screwed the eye hooks into the ceiling where each end of my 2x4 would end up. Then put some sturdy rope through them. To get the height of the lampshades right, I put a temporary knot in the ropes and placed my piece of wood in them and started adjusting the cords with the lampshades attached. Once I got them to the heights I liked I tied knots in the cord on the topside of my piece of wood.

Then it came for wiring. I striped the black outer layer cord from light bulb strands to get to the white and black smaller cords.

Once I did this to all four cords, I fed them through my metal electrical box into each of the holes. Then when they met in the middle, I connected the exposed wire to their matching counterparts (white with white and black with black) and put an electrical guard on each group.

You can see the grey cord in the picture above. Thats my extension cord. I wired that together with all of my lamp cords and ran it down the 2x4 and down my wall to the electrical outlet. Thats how I will be getting power to my chandelier. Then I used my doodads to fasten each of the wires in place on my piece of wood. Once everything was set, I hung the whole thing in my temporary knots and fixed them into tight permanent knots. Which is how I got this lovely set up:

I really wish I had better pictures. You cant really see how awesome these edison bulbs are. I know I probably didnt describe  this very well so if anyone has any questions whatsoever I would love to answer them! Enjoy my pretties!!!

Xoxo
miss you always,
Shanna Elyse!