Hi everyone this is my first post. Wish me luck. I have always been an itchy fingertip girl (you know when you really cannot resist the urge of doing something crafty). Suddenly the other day I came across this beautiful capiz shell chandelier, with a huge price tag. 

Me and my husband move a lot, in fact we have been moving around our entire adult life, and one move equals to half of your favorite stuff going to the curb (this hurts at times) or to Goodwill.

So now coming back to where I lost track and went off road, I just loved the capiz shell chandelier, and also desperately wanted to hide the awful existing light fixture that the new apartment provided, which hangs just above our bed. I googled and googled to find something similar to the capiz chandelier, which I can make and will not leave back a hole in my purse. Thanks to all the bloggers with the similar interest. I found a few of them with different ideas for the project. I really loved the wax paper shell idea and immediately had a plan. 

Things that I required were, a big laundry basket (this is because the  light fixture they had there was awfully big).  A few rolls of wax paper, parchment paper, iron, metal  wire(you can buy the small metal rings from the  jewelry making sections, at hobby lobby,  Michel’s etc.),  a circle cutter(I did not have one so I literally drew circles and did cut them with scissors) .

First I hanged the basket over my existing light (trust me at that point it looked really scary and disheartening). 

I moved on with cutting equal sizes of wax paper in a batch of five sheets together. Placed them in between the parchment papers and ironed them at the lowest setting. The warmth of the iron will make the wax melt and the papers will stick to each other forming a rather stiffer material to work with. Now at this point my kitchen came handy, I started drawing the circles with a small lid of the mustard dispenser, and cut them with a very sharp small scissors (be careful here we have only ten fingers). Or you can straightaway use your circle cutter if you have one, if not, come to my boat. Please remember, you have to make tons of them, (the roundels), don’t be discouraged. I swear by my fingertips it will be worth every pain taken. 

Next is, you gather together four of five of the circles, take a board pin and punch two holes where you can fasten one with the other to form a chain of the shells. For hanging the individual chains to the basket I made small hooks from the wire and kept mounting them on the basket. You can buy something similar to that from the jewelry making section again, if you want to avoid the extra effort.

For my chandelier I thought of making three layers, you can have your own design to your liking, I wanted to have a lot of them.

Here my husband came up with an entirely new idea to my existing one. He suggested to load up some more of the shell chains with a smaller size roundels, that worked as a magic. The whole chandelier looked more textured. The diffused light through the roundels just looks awesome (it helped my brain to release at least a quarter of my happy hormone required that day). Here is the finished product. 

So this beauty does not rattle at night like the real one, and we get our sound sleep. This also is extremely light weight, so it saved extra drilling work on the ceiling.

The entire project was under $10, not bad huh!

Basket $1, Wax Paper $2, Parchment paper $1, Wire $1

Iron, scissors etc. in hand (we all have them you see!)

Hope you all enjoyed my post. Please please leave me your comments and suggestions, and questions if any, I will be delighted to answer.