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!

Reupholstering basics!

Hello Everyone!


 This post is to shed some light on a craft that I found really intriguing but nervous to pursue. Reupholstering! I had always been so nervous to take on reupholstering because of all the elements it required but once I broke it down it wasn't as intimidating as I thought!

Things you will need:

Fabric of your choosing to cover chair in question
Upholstery stapler (with staples)
Screw gun
Extra screws (these might not be needed but in my case they were)
I also needed spray paint for the legs of my chair, also optional
Fabric foam to be the padding inside your chair


Let's Begin!

This was the set of chairs I started on. I figured their shape was pretty simple and I only paid $20 for all four and a table. So first thing I did was disconnect the seat from the chair. 

You can see how gross the wood is on the bottom of the chair so I went out and bought some mdf to cut out new bottoms. I jigsawed them out using the old bottom as a stencil. After I took off the old fabric and foam, I used that as a guideline of how much I would need of my own material.

Layla decided to help

I sadly don't have very many photos of the rest of the process but I'll break down the directions:

*After using the old fabric and foam for guidelines for my new supplies (adding an extra two or three inches) I got ready to staple the foam to the bottom of the chair.

* When stapling the foam make sure you bring it to the edge of the chair and staple it in a way that the crease the staple is causing is minimal. The reason for that is because when you put fabric over it, you dont want to have a bunch of bumps that make everything look funky. You can space out the staples a couple inches apart. 

*After you've stapled your foam all the way around, its time for fabric! When you staple your fabric you bring it all the way around to the bottom of the seat instead of to the edge like we did with the foam. You need to pull it really taught so once again, there is no gathering. It's a trial by error process. 

*After you finish putting the fabric on the bottom you repeat the same process for the rest of your chair.  And viola! You've just reupholstered like a pro! 

I don't have a finished product shot of what I did with the table unfortunately but I had to sew the tops of the chairs to get a proper fit. Which is a whole other obstacle I won't get into on here! Here's what mine looked like in the end:

Well goodluck with each of your projects and if you have any other upholstery pointers I would love to hear them!

Miss you always,

Shanna

xo