We will start with the most difficult one first! The chandelier was a huge pain in the butt! Honestly, I will probably never make another one as long as I live. It was worth the pain in the back and the annoyance of making it through because it made Bridgette's side really pop! Also if you have really super sharp scissors that are thin it makes it 100x easier. I didn't, so it was a pain. Cutting out the cardboard was the most ridiculous part but the rest was easy peasy. Lets start out from the beginning.
I made a template out of a chandelier silhouette I Googled. All you do is Google "chandelier silhouette clip art" and then go to images. Find the one you like best open it up and then right click it to copy it. After that you open up paint and paste the clip art you choose in it you want to make it a little bigger. I did that by going to print and then clicking on the page set up.
After that you want to look at the fit to part. I made mine to be 1 page by 2 pages. If you want a really big chandelier you can make it 2 pages by 2 pages or 3 pages by 3 pages. You can also change the orientation of the page if you want it to look a certain way. After you switch around the orientation to the way you want it just go to print preview and you can see how it will print out. Here is a little picture to show you what I did.
After the template is printed out you will want to find what you want to make your chandelier out of. I choose to make mine out of cardboard. Since we still have two in diapers we have a bunch of diaper boxes laying around. I did try to make it out of foam board at first but it was almost impossible to cut and make it look nice. Cardboard is the way to go.
I cut out the chandelier template and taped the two pages together to make a big template. There was the beaded part of the chandelier template the I just cut right out so I just had the base. I opened up the box to make it easier to cut. Then I took tape and taped it to the box. I rolled the tape and taped it behind the template so I could trace around the whole image without having to worry about tape.
Honestly the cutting part was one of the hardest parts of making it. It was a very dark time for me. I became a person that I didn't want to be when I was cutting out the darn thing. I swore, got moody, and felt exhausted after cutting it out. Okay, okay I might be over exaggerating but really guys it sucked! My wrist and back hurt just thinking about it. Anyways, I cut out two of the templates. After they are completely cut out I then decided to paint them. I took regular ol' craft paint in purple and did one coat on each side. A bonus the craft paint was .99 cents at Meijer and I used it to paint picture frames too! Score! Also I cut one of the templates in half before I painted it.
I let it dry (on top of my picture frames that I was painting) then painted the other side. You can see the foam chandelier I tried to do. I wanted to make it bigger but trust me foam is not the way to go. Plus it cost $1.00 for the foam from the dollar store and the cardboard was FREE! After the paint is dry I modge-podged purple glitter onto it. I am cheap so I made my own modge-podge out of Elmer's glue and water. Super easy you just take the glue and put it in a bowl then slowly add water to make it thinner and easier to be able to paint. The glitter is amazing! It covered up any mistakes and it makes it look so pretty!
Glitter gets everywhere! It has been two days since I made this and I am still finding glitter! I took some grocery bags to do the glitter on then I was able to put some of the glitter back into the container and throw the whole bag away. It made it less messy but glitter is, well, glitter. By nature it gets everywhere. After you put glitter on it you have to let it dry completely. I made the mistake of not letting it dry completely and when I went to hot glue it together it was very floppy. I would definitely let it dry for a couple hours if not overnight. The cardboard shouldn't be squishy.
You hot glue the half pieces to the middle of the big piece like the picture above. I didn't wait for mine to dry completely so I had issues with it standing up right. When it was dry it was able to stand up great. I ran the hot glue down both of the sides where I glued the two pieces together. I immediately put glitter on top of the hot glue to hide it. I also took hot glue and ran it along the edges where you could really see the cardboard then immediately put glitter a long those too. It made it look really nice and you couldn't tell it was cardboard. I hot glued ribbon to the back of the chandelier. If I was smarter while the hot glue was still hot I would have added glitter to that too so I could cover up the ribbon part. Oh well, you live you learn. The ribbon is to hang it by. You can really use any type of ribbon for it. I used a thin black one because it was one I had already for crafts I was doing for Eli's room.
After that you can glue whatever accessories you want to the chandelier. I choose butterflies I got from the dollar store and some pearl looking beads I got from the craft section of Meijer. I think it turned out really nice and went really good with the whole decor of the room. You can really glue on whatever you want for your chandelier though, its great how versatile it is. After it was all ready I decided to let it hang on my daughters door until I was ready to hang it. I did this because I noticed when I laid it down some of the glitter came off and some of the parts started to bend a little bit. I am not sure if the chandelier was still wet (a big probability) or the cardboard I used was too thin. You can also buy a clear spray from a home improvement store to lock in the glitter and it will probably make it harder. Either way it will be hanging up and not laying down so it wasn't a big deal for me.
Then we got a hook and hung it from the ceiling. All together this project cost me around $3! You could buy them at Walmart for around $19 and I think I found them for not too much online. I think it was like $8 but then you had to pay shipping. It was worth the extra work I had to put into it and I love the way it turned out! Now lets talk about the paper lantern. This will be a super short tutorial because it is super easy. First you buy a paper lantern from the dollar store. I had to look a round at a couple of them to find one.
After I had the lantern set up all I did was add some daisy's and butterflies to the outside of it with hot glue. When you hang it, it will make it lopsided. So you can take some small marbles or some type of weight and then glue it to the inside on the other side so it hangs straight. After that, all I did was use a fake pearl stranded necklace and put it on the hook to hang it up with. I really liked the look of it and it made it hang a little better. I twisted some of the strands to lock it around the hook.
See easy peasy! All together I am guessing that this costed around $3 too. I am really bad at math but thinking about them I am pretty sure they even cost me less to do.You could make a couple of these and pair it with tissue paper balls (super easy to make) and make a really cool decoration to hang from the ceiling.
Peace and Love,
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