Part 2 – DIY Flower Chandelier – Victory & (Temporary) Defeat

As you can see from this photo that I showed you yesterday, on that bottom row of metal I had kept the same spacing (i.e., the same 5/8″ measurement) between the metal rods that I used on the top upper rows. But that resulted in the bottom row of rods not being evenly spaced between the two upper rows of rods. And this became a problem when I started bending that bottom row of rods up. It looked messy, uneven, and unplanned.

So yesterday, I knew I needed to redo that whole row. But I already drilled holes through the metal, so I needed to figure out how to do that. After removing those metal rods (which took quite a bit of brute force and sheer determination since they were held in place with JB Weld), I then used more JB Weld epoxy clay to cover over the holes that I had already drilled, making sure to push the clay into those holes as I molded it around the bottom metal piece. I tried to get it as perfect as possible before the epoxy clay dried, and then when it was completely dry, I used 100-grit sandpaper to smooth it out.

This gave me a new base into which I could drill the new holes, and then I re-inserted the metal rods and held them into place using super glue. It actually worked quite well!

Once I had that row of metal rods in place and secured, I used a 1-inch wood dowel rod to bend that row up, just like I had used an empty quart paint container, and a spray paint can for the first two rows. I have to admit that I was pretty proud of how this whole frame turned out. I know it looks like a mess right now, since there are no flowers, and the whole thing is an ugly color. But just imagine the flowers attached and the whole thing painted white.

I was also concerned about the overall size, but once I brought it into the closet and set it on the island, my concern went away. I think it’s going to be the perfect size!

I do plan to trim the rods down. I wasn’t sure how tall I wanted the tallest rods (stems) to be, but I think these are too tall for a closet.

Also, I apologize for the poor lighting in these pictures, but this chandelier is the first light in the whole chain of lighting in the closet, so without it there, none of the others on this switch will work. 😀

I also don’t plan to keep all of the rods on that bottom row all the same length. I want them a bit more staggered instead of having 16 flowers around the bottom that are the exact same height.

So I’ll keep eight of them the height they are now, and then I’ll cut the other eight down about 2-3 inches, so those eight will be about here…

And then I’ll adjust the heights of all of the rest of the rods from there.

After watching lots of videos on how to make flowers with various types of media, I had pretty much determined that air dry clay would be the best option for this chandelier. But since I have hundreds of wood tasting spoons on hand, I thought I’d try those out first. These were a fail. The spoons aren’t curved enough. Since they’re so flat, it’s hard to get them into a flower shape. I tried gluing them to each other like this, but you can see how flat that made the flower shape.

That’s not at all what I’m looking for. So I tried gluing them more upright, but again, since the spoons are so flat, and they’re wood, so I can’t bend them at all, that didn’t work out either.

So I went to Michael’s and purchased some Craftsmart air dry clay. I had already watched several videos on making flowers with air dry clay, and they all looked so easy, so I was fairly confident that I could do this.

Well, this was a complete mess. In my humble opinion (even though I’ve never used air dry clay before), this product is way too wet. It stuck to everything! I couldn’t get it off of my hands.

And after attempting to roll it flat between two pieces of plastic wrap, just as I saw person after person doing in the videos I watched, it was so sticky that it wouldn’t come off of the plastic wrap.

So both of those experiments failed. I’m thinking I just need to try a different brand of air dry clay. Or maybe I need to go with an oven-baked clay. I don’t really know. I’m feeling a bit out of my element here. I only have a tiny bit of experience with clay, and it’s been years since I’ve attempted any kind of project with an oven-baked clay. But I do remember it being a lot easier to work with than this, and it didn’t stick to everything it touched.

If you have any experience with clays, I’d love to know what you think! Is there a better brand of air dry clay that I should be using? Should I go with an oven-baked clay? Is there another product that I haven’t thought about (or don’t know about) that would be easier for sculpting flowers? Tell me what you think.