Easy Capiz-y
Finding light fixtures I love for prices that aren’t painful has been a struggle since we bought our first house. I am obsessed with this Moravian star pendant light over at Young House Love.
However, in spite of the deep discount at which they bought it, $135 is a big OUCH for me.
Then there’s this glorious vintage tulip swag pendant on ebay. It’s only slightly less painful at $129. Not to mention, it’s exceptionally hard to find these beauties.
This glorious capiz pendant from World Market allows for significantly more breathing room, but it’s still $69 when not on sale, and I needed two of them.
We have the world’s most boring hallway and I have barely had the heart to tackle the design challenge it gives me. This was the hallway when we bought Serenity.
It has doors galore, as well as awkwardly placed utility controls. The only thing I’ve been able to come up with until recently was to redo the flooring, install chair rail, paint the walls two-tone, and switch out the light fixtures. The result is better, but still not a show stopper.
New light fixtures were non-negotiable. I didn’t love the lights I installed, but I found the chandelier in the dining room, those lights, and a breathtakingly beautiful pendant light for over the sink all being sold as a set on Craigslist for $45. Can’t beat that! And *bonus* they were all part of the sadly discontinued Eden Collection from Home Depot. So I tolerated them. Until now. While hunting for home decor supplies, I came across a capiz garland at Michaels (ordinarily $30, but on sale for $15) and, instantly, visions of light fixtures danced in my head. The only question was how to construct them. Enter a wire wreath frame ($2.50 at Joann’s) and fishing line.
I carefully cut the twine off all of the capiz circles, grouped them into sets of three, then drilled an extra hole in two out of each three. Once the holes were drilled, I strung each set together vertically, then tied each string to the wreath frame. Oh! But first, I spray painted the wreath frames oil-rubbed bronze. I know it’s so 2007, but I still love it!
And repeat. 29 times. It took 15 strands per wreath to get the coverage I wanted. Then I just had to attach the frames to the base of the light fixtures that used to live in the hallway. (This experience is not good for my hoarding instinct, y’all – I held on to those things for four years “just in case!”) I used the fishing line to tie the wreath frame to the knobs on the old base.
Et, voilà!
Each of these came to $10 (since we already had the fishing line). True, it’s not shaped like a flower or a star, but I love the mini chandelier effect and the great light they provide for our dismally windowless hallway. Poor hallway, it had been neglected so long. After once again agonizing over minutely different shades of white, I repainted the upper portion of the halfway to brighten the space and added several pieces of homemade art, but we’ll get around to that later.