Sharpie Chandelier – A Work In Progress

As you know I have “a big thing” about chandeliers, especially, at the moment, coloured ones.

My flat is pretty much finished, but it doesn’t stop me from pondering upon and fiddling about with the “fripperies” which really put my stamp on the place, love them or loathe them.

And as such I have always wanted to give my spare/guest room a colourful bohemian/gyspy feel to it, but at the moment it remains, in my eyes, very conservative, so I have been looking towards the el cheapo (mostly acrylic) chandelier that’s in there as a stepping stone to becoming more flamboyant, wondering if I could adapt it to look like the coloured ones I have been lusting after.

I have looked on various websites to see if I could buy coloured drops, but I would have been limited to just a few colours as they generally come in sets of 5 or 10 and to be honest at the price they were I could have simply bought a new colourer chandelier for around £50. I even pondered buying two really cheap coloured shades for around £12 each to dismantle, but again that would limit me to one or two colours and could prove to be an expensive fiddle fart if the idea in my head didn’t actually materialise.

Then last week completely unconnected so I thought, I found this light shade in a local charity shop for just £1.50, well it would have been rude not to buy it especially at that price, thinking I would take it apart to make some Christmas tree decorations, I definitely wasn’t thinking bedroom chandelier at the time.

But then, I had an Ulrika moment just as I was nodding off to sleep …… I wondered if I could colour the drops with Sharpie pens, well, I may now have a very discoloured thumb and index finger, but it worked!

There was only one thing to do then and that was to see how the first four looked on the existing chandelier ……. OMG, I was so thrilled I can’t tell you.

The drops turned out to be exactly the same size/shape etc. as the originals but I have carefully replaced and put them in a safe place just in case I ever want to put them back in the future.

This is as far as I have got so far, I think it could still take a bit more colour, but I need to get into my Christmas decoration box where I know I have some of the smaller link bead chains and, am pretty sure, another large, round centre ball to finish it off.

On the £1.50 shade, in total, there are at least 100 drops, they are a bit of a fiddle to remove, but I reckon I could add a few more drops evenly on the linking chains…….. post will be continued when this has been done.

Then, I plan to colour and use some of the remainder  on my twig Christmas tree. For the past two years it has been all very twee and tasteful and I am sure I would get that “same old same old” sort of feeling when I come to decorate it, so this year I hope to bring out it’s inner gyspy as well ……….