Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Homemade Drum Shade Chandelier

My homemade drum shade. Here's a quick step by step guide for how I put this together...
First, gathering supplies. I used two backer boards from my son's bunk bed bookcase/headboard. These were quite bendy, and about the right height. I also had an old chandelier I wanted to use for this project. I also grabbed a couple bungee cords, some duct tape, and Material to cover it with. Next...
I used the bungee cords to hold the boards in a rough circle shape around the chandelier so I could get the size/shape correct. Then...
I taped the edges of the boards together to make it smooth. Do not use the tape sparingly. Use as much as you want/need. After taping...
remove the bungee cords. Make sure the tape looks like it is holding. Cover it...
I used a olive/khaki colored piece of vinyl I'd used previously. There was enough leftover for this project. At this point, I really should have lined the inside with another piece of vinyl, but alas, I didn't. That's ok.. I have a plan for that. Now I need to hang this off the chandelier. Let's insert some grommets. First,
knock out the holes in the sides. These can be wherever you need them to line it up properly with your chandelier.
Insert Grommets.
Run wire through the grommets.
Make sure it all balances. I had to run wire both directions to make sure it would hang steady and straight. And you're done! (Except for the wiring)
Eventually (hopefully very soon) I will cover the bottom of the shade with a bit of sheer curtain material. Just something so you can't look up into it and see the ugly wood inside. To me this sounds simpler than trying to line the inside with vinyl now that it's all wired up to hang.

2 comments:

Becca said...

Very nice, I'm wondering what i can do my my chandelier i don't like now... hmmm :D

Heather said...

Great job! You made that fast, you just talked about making that.