Grosgrain: Wreath Wire Drum Shade

We bought this house with your typical gold dining room chandelier. It wasn't horrible but it was kind of 90s (along with the rest of the house). The before chandelier. (Sorry for the fuzzy photo) The previous owners had took the shades with them so it was even more bare than in this photo.

I priced drum shades to fit over the chandelier but for some odd reason the universe has decided that drum shades over 12" are supposed to be really expensive. I don't quite know why. It's just two metal hoops with fabric. How that comes out to be a couple hundred dollars by some website standards is beyond me. But I digress. I decided to make my own drum shade instead and this was the result.

I removed the chandelier, painted it aqua blue and reattached it with the new drum shade I had made. I also sprayed flame retardant spray on the inside and outside of the chandelier since as you can see the light bulbs came really close to the fabric. They aren't touching but I had to bend the lights inward or else they would have. They look closer than they really are in this photo. In reality they are 3" from the interior fabric.

I like how the light looks when turned on and this photo doesn't do it justice. But it casts a very nice bright but subdued light and makes a very interesting pattern on the ceiling.

I eventually want to purchase an entirely new chandelier so I didn't want to spend a dime on revamping the old one. So I decided to make one of my own using only materials that I had on hand. Those materials ended up being:

Two 30" wreath forms (leftover from February's craft night)

3 Poster boards

12 gauge wire

a metal washer (the only I bought at the hardware store for .40 cents)

spray paint

linen

1 yard of patterned fabric

Step 1: Gather your materials. Don't forget your needle nose pliers.

Step 2:
Remove the outer most circle from your wreath forms.

Step 3: Using your 12 gauge wire wrap it around your washer. Do this four times with four pieces of wire. Remember to leave room to wrap the ends of the wire around your wreath form.

Step 4: Wrap the wires around your wreath frame trying to center the washer in the middle.

Step 5: I have to say that I don't think that this step is necessary and it ended up causing my shade to misform a bit so I would recommend skipping it but I'll tell you what I did anyway in case you find it is necessary. I used another piece of wire to attach my top wreath form circle to my bottom wreath form circle about 1' long. I made four of these and attached at opposite ends of the wreath form. But I think the next step should be enough.