Hanging Lampshade Design...

I've started working on the 2nd Lampshade for the living room and here is the 1st, 2nd, 3rd attempt at bending the wire into a basic round cylinder-ish shape.

The first few 'failed' cylinders... Wobbly and awful looking!

Finally! 'Lightbulb' moment! Figured out how to stabilize the wire without the need to solder!! Yeee-ha!

It still looks kinda empty (top portion) .. Less is More ?
Just the leaves alone looked empty so I sewed on some Berry-beads! Haha!

The issue was as usual to try and get it bended using only 1 single piece of wire without having to join different parts (or the use of soldering! *grunts*).

I had pictured a design with beige linen, something like this;

Then dressing it up with beads and shiny leaf-shaped sequins I had bought at Masjid India. I had the perfect coloured linen, it was an old dress and seeing I could still fit into it, I didn't have the heart to cut into it. It suddenly felt like a sin to cut up a perfectly wearable dress! I must be going slightly mad. So instead I used the shiny Gold tulle I got from Klim's Craft because I thought the transparent fabric would make the light work better with a shiny factor. We'll see...

Miniature Chandelier: Nearing completion...

There it is... swinging gracefully on the little holder.... It's far from perfect but am just glad it's done. My first Miniature Chandelier Protoype. I was up until 3am last night accompanied by 2 mugs of coffee and 2 cans of Beer, hung the last teardrop dangly Crystal, had a good long look. Okay, I'm happy with it and I can allow myself to go bed!

 

Trying to solder on the curly wurly arms was tears-inducing. It was just not going to work, so back up plans was to do a ring around the arms to stabilized it.

It sure does look prettier in the daylight.....

I popped in Ampang Point yesterday while leaving my Ol' Girl for service, and did some material shopping! There is a Crafts, Ribbons and accessories Shop on the 2nd floor next to Popular called Klim Craft. I found the teardrop-shaped beads that I wanted for the Chandelier, they were a tad bit pricey but I didn't see the point of going all the way down to Masjid India to the wholesale place so I bought 2 different sizes, each were about RM 3.90. I was a bit shocked that they were selling simple beads (the exact ones I got from Jalan Sultan) for RM 4.50 a packet!! I got my stash for RM 1 a packet. They were exactly the same beads!

The shop also had tulle, so I bought half a meter each of the shimmering ones to experiment. The price is ok; RM 4.80 a meter.

I had also planned to take up Embroidery soon, I had been looking around for hoops and to think I almost bought an over-priced one from Art Friends, The Curve selling for RM 17.90! Good thing I remembered to pop by Daiso and Hallelujah! they sell Embroidery hoops too! Wahahaha! Don't you just love Daiso!?

 

But I did find these gems from Art Friends and they were cheap! The little dressing table was only for RM 5.50  and the utensils for RM 10.

Mini-Chandelier Project: Almost there... just a little bit more!

The Creative Deities had been very kind.

After loafing the entire Saturday away, I told myself Switch off the damn TV and get cracking!

I had to make a Shade cover to hide the ugly green bulb holder... Beading these suckers was pretty exhausting and took longer than I expected....

Screwed in the tiny Bulb and hook on a cap ...

 

Probably gonna solder on the curly wurly arms tonight to make the shape more defined and it won't look so sloppy. It'll be a real pain... am gonna need extra hands tonight to hold everything in place!

 



Frankly, it still looks horrendous and unrefined. Still much to work on and may the future ones look waaaay nicer than this first Prototype!

Curly Wurly Chandelier arms....

What do you guys think?

Personally I prefer the curly shape of the blue-curly arms but it's very difficult to bend them without cracking a lot of the beads...

Mini Chandelier Work-in-progress....

So, I finally got round to start the Mini Chandelier project that I had been planning and sketching for some time. As usual, the idea always seems easy in the head but once in the midst of execution, "Damn, this ain't gonna work" is very often exclaimed while yanking hair...

I bought a cheap**s Soldering tool from Mr. DIY sometime back and was a bit intimidated to use it; the last I held one was probably 15 years ago. Then lastnight I decided, okay, I really need to fix some lights in the dollhouse. No more procrastinating! I realized the lights are delaying the dollhouse decoration; if I dont get the lights wired in, I'll never be able to put in all the cute small furniture I made/ bought. So, after almost an hour twisting the lampshade cover into shape, solder mess everywhere and even melted some parts of my extension cord, I called it a night and went to bed in a huff.

It took some time to find all the Right parts in various Hardware stores. I started with the outer lampshade to hide the batten holder. Also managed to find the perfect sized lightbulb! Are they cute or what!!?

I went to a Handmade/Craft Bazaar last weekend and saw some very pretty bronze charms for bracelets but they were selling each tiny piece for RM 2! I went home and couldn't stop thinking about them and how pretty they would look if incorporated into the dangly parts of my Chandelier! So yesterday, I went on a material hunt downtown by myself and walked from Petaling Street to Masjid India in search of the perfect bits.

Then I made the curly-wurly arms... All the painful effort and I thought this was the hardest part....

They looked very simple and I had to dress them up, right? So I decided to match some coloured beads to find a nice combination. Stringing the beads through the thick wire was pure hell. I really thought putting the beads in should've been the easy part. There were a few bead casualty..... Off to the Hardware shop again tomorrow to get a slightly thinner wire *whimper*