Paper-Clip Chandelier: Step Three

Step Three: Finishing Touches

1. There are many ways to decorate your chandelier, and you will find the best way by experimenting with the paperclips. Below I'll show you three things that I tried.
2. I created chains that were fourteen paperclips long. One end was connected to the top ring and the end was connected to the last ring.
3. Adding a paperclip to the end of the last two rings wherever a paperclip intersected with a wire. This was to give me a spot to glue on gems. I had a total of eight paperclips per ring and each was hot glued to a gem. Be careful when hot gluing. The hot glue may come into contact with your fingers when you push the gem and clip together.
4. On the inside I created 5 strings made up of 5 clips each. This made them fall halfway down the chandelier. From there I glued on a gem to each on to give the chandelier an inner glow. You may want to glue the gem first and then connect the string to the top wire.
5. Creating a hanging string of five clips and making two of them. I connected them through hot glue to an aluminum foil plate. With metallic covered plasticine and candles, I placed them in the center of the foil. When turned on it gave the chandelier an actual light. This works better when the chandelier has a more thicker exterior. The handing chandelier would be better with this.

Hanging Stripes:

Gem:

I hope this image is clearer:

For more steps and ideas you can look at this tutorial which has better pictures. This may be more useful for people with wreath kits, instead of metal wiring: Click Here

Paper-Clip Chandelier: Step Two

Step Two: Laying out the Structure:

First, you have to choose the size of your rings. This will be based on your design. For this example, I'm picking the original design. You need three shapes of metal wiring. *This is only for three sections*

• If you want to make a large chandelier, you can buy wreath arrangement kits. Those circles will help to make a solid structure.
• If you want to take it easy on your first one, cut out your own metal wiring. Start by cutting a circle. From here cut a circle almost double in length and one that is SLIGHTLY smaller than the first. It has to be slightly otherwise there will be crowding. To finish the circle wrap the two ends around each other to make sure they don't split apart. If you find it easier, you can also use string to divide up the sections.

Need to remove all wreath segments

After this all the steps are the same after choosing rings.

Second, start making the basic framework for the chandelier. You will be forming triplets of paperclips that will eventually lead to a diamond shape. Make sure that the paperclips can stretch. Meaning, don't make it overcrowded. You will have to experiment here to figure out what works best.

• If you are using the wreaths, you might need about 50 paperclip triplets.
• If you care doing the wiring (approximately 30cm) you could need about 10-15 triplets

Third, start connecting the paperclips, adding in more to create a diamond pattern. This will be your basic framework. At this point, you MUST hang your chandelier. Otherwise your paperclips will get tangled and you won't be able ton connect them very easily.

Paper-Clip Chandelier: Step One

I have told people that I can make some cool house ideas for very cheap prices. One of these is a paper-clip chandelier. These do take quite a bit of time to start, but once you get going it is easy to finish and come up with your own designs. They are very elegant and by choosing right colors it can pass for an expensive decoration. There are 3 simple steps. While the steps are easy, it is a long process so be prepared to invest time into this, as you would in any art project. Before I start, I will say that this was my first paper clip chandelier. I had not made one before, so I can say with confidence that someone with no artistic experience can successfully make a chandelier.

I will be posting the steps in different posts so that I don't make a long drawn out post.

Step 1: Design and Experiment

This is the second longest step in this whole process. This step is where you will research different types of chandeliers. Do you want a circular one, pieces with hanging strips or more geometric closed ended pieces? Here you will also choose what colors you want. Normal paper clips are usually silver which is a color that works with every house. Black and Gold are also solid colors. Here are some examples of my design work when picking a chandelier. Realize that I not only looked at real life chandeliers but I have a large number of thumbnails. And if you can't draw, that's alright. Look at pictures you can find online.

       

These are from a simple google search of chandeliers. And you might be wondering how to make paper clips look like this. The simple answer is that in the metal will glint in light which gives it that glow. Also, you can add light bulbs or gems with hot glue to give it an elegant look. If it makes it easier just imagine that all the glass pieces is a paper clip, you can then see how they connect together to make a chandelier.

As you can see, none of the thumbnails have a lot of detail. Also, the images aren't an exact representation of what they look like in real life (e.g. the paper-clips).

These are not the only designs that you can do, these are ones I did while I was planning for my chandelier.