Book Page Chandelier

I made this book page chandelier today, and I LOVE the way it came out!

It's Sunday, and I decided to do something fun and frivolous for my craft room. It started when we changed a light bulb in my overhead light and this was sitting on my work top.

Hmmm, I don't want to just hang this back up there. I wonder if hot glue will hold string on glass?

This curvy red chandelier is going up there eventually, once The Welding Man checks if it needs rewired and makes sure it is safe. $7 at a thrift store, baby! It will be perfect when it's done.

With all the book page recycling I've used in my craft studio, I decided to make a temporary chandelier using a circle punch. I knew I'd need at least 450 circles, so I made 500. I could do 5 pages at a time and get 7 circles from each set of pages, so this did not take long at all.

I also used this gorgeous butterfly punch and made about 50 of them out of heavier paper, since they have so many open spaces, the book pages are too fragile to use the way I planned.

I sewed 12 circles and 1 butterfly together for each 18" long string.

A dot of hot glue holds the lightweight strings perfectly. If I ever want to return the glass shade to it's original condition, the glue pops off with a little help from my heat gun.

The book pages I used were very delicate, so this happened early on. I just used a glue stick on another circle and put it over the top, covering the tear and the thread.

The repair does not even show once all the strings are glued on. I sewed about a dozen strings and had to do alot of repairs. There had to be a better way.

So I changed tactics and laid out the circles and butterflies then stretched some crochet thread across them, securing them with dots of hot glue. A dot of hot glue on the string holds it down on the table and makes it easier to lay across the hot glue on the circles. This was just as fast and easy as sewing them together! Before lifting the string of circles up get rid of glue wisps with a heat gun.

Here are a sewn string and several glued strings side by side. I prefer the cleaner look of the glued strings.

And here is the chandelier put back in place over the light fixture. I like it. I like it alot!

I LOVE the random placement of the butterflies!

It diffuses the bright overhead light nicely without making the room feel dark or shadowy. I will try to get some shots in the daylight and see if it still makes me happy. I have a hunch it will! So that was fun, throwing away my "to do" list and creating something on a whim. Sometimes you just have to go for it!