Hi, y'all! Kari here. It's been awhile, hasn't it? Life has changed quite a bit for me in the last couple of months. I had lived in California for 34 years...until this past January. 2012 began with a move for my husband and me---to Colorado. While it's difficult to leave great friends and family behind in California, we are so excited about this new Colorado adventure. It really was quite a whirlwind---our California house sold in two and a half days on the market (much faster than we had planned for) and we had a lot going on with the holidays. Life got a little nuts there for awhile!
Our new place in Colorado is quite a project! We bought an old schoolhouse that was built in 1919. In the next year, we plan to renovate the place with the hopes of moving in at the beginning of 2013. If you'd like to follow the renovation and design process for this new project of ours, I will be blogging about it at a separate blog,
Lower Boxelder Bliss. We'd love for you to follow our progress over there!
One of the things we love about our new property is the fact that we got a bonus house along with the schoolhouse! We call it "the guesthouse," but it originally was built as a teacherage. It's a cozy little house with two tiny bedrooms, a sun porch, living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Our plan is to renovate the schoolhouse, move into it, and then renovate the guest house. In the meantime, the guest house is our home. We don't want to spend much money on the little house as we plan on renovating it in the future, but I still want to make it feel homey and comfortable. Here's a picture of the living room of the guest house (sorry for the poor photo quality):
This picture was taken before we moved in. I have since trashed those terrible window treatments. I couldn't even see donating them---they were threadbare, full of dust, and home to some tenacious spiders. Also, notice the light fixture. It was this really strange fan---the fan blades were super short (not even 14 inches long) and the whole thing was just kind of dirty and gross. It had to go, but I didn't want to spend a lot of money on its replacement.
I have really been loving the color combo of mint green and gold lately---and a little black and white thrown in is nice, too. I remember I had some mint green Christmas ornaments that I had purchased from Anthropologie this past holiday season. I drug the box into the guest house and just kind of stared at them for a couple of weeks. I liked the idea of using them in a light fixture, but I wasn't sure how I would incorporate them.
A fortuitous trip to Cost Plus/World Market helped me decide what to do (finally!) (Hey, does anyone else still call that store Cost Plus? I know it's supposed to be World Market now, but I can't break the habit. I've been calling it Cost Plus since I was a little girl...) Anyway, I wandered past the lighting section and saw this
coffee-colored capiz light fixture. I passed it by initially because it was $69.99 and also because I wasn't really thinking that I'd incorporate any capiz into the light fixture. However, a perusal of the clearance section changed my mind. In the clearance section was one of these capiz fixtures that had been damaged---it had missing and broken capiz disks. It was marked down pretty low already, but a passing salesgirl told me that if it didn't sell they were going to throw it away. I was able to get the manager to mark it down a little further and got it for next to nothing!
I honestly think that the above fixture is overpriced at $69.99. Part of the reason I think that it's too much money is that it doesn't actually come with the light part---you have to buy a light kit. However, since I got a great deal on the capiz part (even though it was damaged), I figured I could spend $12.99 on this
light kit. :)
I took both the light kit and the capiz chandelier outside and did a little spray paint magic. I used Krylon's Brass spray paint and coated the light kit and the top metal part of the chandelier. I also randomly sprayed some of the capiz disks. The coffee color already had a gold hue to it, but having some of the disks sprayed gold really makes the finished piece look a little more expensive. Also, this fixture has a lot of movement to it, so adding another color (even subtly so) to the mix makes the light fixture have a lot more depth.
I didn't do a great job of taking pictures of all of my steps here, but it's not rocket science.
I placed the light fixture on a board between two chairs (see below) and worked on this while watching episodes of Downton Abbey (the perfect activity for an evening when my husband was out to a business dinner).
I used this spool of gold jewelry wire for the project. I had it left over from a different project, but you could easily procure a spool from Hobby Lobby or Michael's.
I cut lengths of the jewelry wire and just started attaching the green Christmas ornaments to the metal frame of the chandelier. Having the chandy resting on the board was great---everything was elevated and I could walk around the entire piece to see where I needed to add another ornament. When I was finished, I cleaned up the wire at the top of the frame, making it look a little neater than what you see in the photo below:
Then, I hardwired that puppy into the ceiling and added a light bulb:
I love the final result. It was such an inexpensive light fixture, but it adds a little sparkle into this tiny little house that is serving as our temporary dwelling. In a year, I won't feel bad about taking this down and putting the Christmas ornaments on a tree. For right now, though, this light fixture makes me smile every time I look at it. I really like how the mint green and the gold capiz looks together. It was not what I originally planned to do, but I love the final outcome!
If you wanted to try this project but don't have gorgeous Anthro ornaments hanging out in a box at your house, try using these
Glass Bubble Balls from CB2. You could leave them clear, OR you could enamel the insides by pouring in acrylic enamel in your favorite color (find this paint at Hobby Lobby or Michael's or wherever craft supplies are sold). I have enameled the inside of the Glass Bubble Balls from CB2 for a different project and they turn out great---I know they'd be fabulous in a chandelier!
Happy Monday!
