Raindrop Chandelier

This project has literally been more than a year in the making.  But when I finished part 1 15 months ago I really thought I was done.  Turns out that I wasn’t.  I decided sometime in March that I needed to add a few more things to it.  And it took me three more months to get around to finishing it.

This my friends is a raindrop chandelier, or a paper rainstorm or something.  I got the idea to make this from a pile of leftover scraps from an art journal page I made last spring.

You can see the awesome pile of leftover raindrops up in the corner, right?  I guess I kind of went overboard on cutting them out.  Anyway, they sat in a pile for a long time until I got the idea to sew them together and tie them onto a ring.  And it hung up above my desk like that for a year.  And then a few months ago I got the idea to add a larger ring of rain and a smaller one and turn it into a much beefier, rainier chandelier.

I used some chrome spraypaint one one side of my papers to add a little shimmer, and to cover up whatever was on the backside.  Some of my paper scraps were double sided, and if the flip side didn’t fit into my color scheme I sprayed them chrome.  After I sprayed all my paper I started cutting out raindrops.  I think I spent one evening watching a movie and cut out about 300, maybe 400 raindrops ranging in size from .5 inches tall to about 1.5 inches.  It didn’t take as long as you might think.  I was surprised at how quickly my little pile of raindrops became a large pile of raindrops.

But the hardest and most time consuming part of the whole project was not the cutting out of a gillion tiny little raindrops.  Assembling the three rings for the chandelier base was MUCH more frustrating.  I bought thee sizes of rings at the craft store and then spray painted them chrome, they were originally gold.  And then  I think I tried about 8 different ways before I figured out how to hook them together and keep all three flat and level and evenly spaced between each other.  It was totally annoying. And it’s probably a good thing I already had all my raindrops cut and sewed together into raindrop chains.   Because if I had started with the ring base I probably would have given up on this project and thrown the whole thing in the trash long before any raindrops saw the light of day.  But now I have it figured out and next time I won’t be nearly so frustrated.  (I have another chandelier project in mind and when I get that one made I’ll take pictures and share my many trials and errors, and the long last successful route.)

But I love the end result.  And I love that I still had clouds pinned to my fake dining room curtain from a baby shower a few weeks ago. (This is the same thrifted sheet turned curtain backdrop I used for Creamie’s birthday party.)  The clouds were the perfect backdrop for my little paper rainstorm.  Here in Utah we had a ridiculously rainy spring.  And while most people think that rainy days (or snowy days for that matter) are “bad” weather, I think they are absolutely beautiful.  And those are the kinds of days that I want to stay inside and bake bread and make something.  I love those “bad” weather days!

This little rainstorm is currently hanging up in the corner above my desk.  And everytime a little bit of breeze comes through, or the heater turns on and moves the air around a bit, or I open the door it starts to spin and twirl and shimmer.  It is absolutely beautiful.  Much prettier than I ever could have imagined.  Besides, now I can tell people that I have a dancing rainstorm over my desk.  And how awesome is that? Not bad from a reject pile of blue paper scraps, and a little spray paint.  Not bad at all.