Faux Capiz Shell Chandelier

I stumbled upon steps to make a wax paper chandelier when I was surfing the web for a DIY project. What grabbed my attention was the fact that you only needed a few simple things to make this pretty chandelier. So I thought, I sure can make something like this. In this post, I’ll explain the steps I took to make my faux capiz shell chandlier. So here we go:

What you need

• A wire basket. I found one at Walmart for $2.50
• Spray Paint $4.99
• Lots of wax paper. I ended up using a whole role $ 3.49
• Parchment paper. I still had some at home from baking Holiday Cookies.
• I got 7 mm oval jump rings to attach the shells together and make strands. I used 4 boxes of 144 rings. That ended up to be the most expensive at $12 for 4 boxes.

 DIY Instructions

• 1. My wire basket I found at Walmart for $2.50
• 2. Spray painted basket with Krylon Brushed Metallic Satin Nickel. You can pick any color you like.
• 3. Got my wax paper and parchment sheets ready. I cut the 3 wax paper sheets at 12″ x 12″ and crinkled the middle sheet up a little for texture.
• 4. Ironed 3 sheets of wax paper between 2 sheets of parchment paper. You can reuse the parchment paper after each use.
• 5. Made a total of about 20 ironed sheets of wax paper. I spray painted them also with the Krylon Brushed Metallic Satin Nickel finish, so they would get that pearly look.
• 6. Spray painting the wax paper is optional but this is close-up of what my wax paper looked like after ironing and spray painting.
• 7. Got my 7 mm oval jump rings ready. These are from Michael’s and costed about $ 2.99/box(144pc) . Luckily had some coupons so that brought the price down.
• 8. Got my wax paper ready to go into the Silhouette Cameo. Used a little spray adhesive to keep the sheets in place.

• 9. Screen shot of Silhouette Software. Circles have a diameter of 2″. I used the Silhouette settings for patterned paper: speed 5, thickness 30 and blade 3. I tried a lower setting  on the blade of 2 but it didn’t cut the circles all the way through. It might have been my blade, so a lower setting might work for you.
• 10. Perfectly cut wax paper circles with 2 small holes, one on the bottom and one on the top.

• 11. Close-up of my faux capiz shell circles
• 12. Close-up of my faux capiz shell circle strands using the oval jump rings
• 13. Start of the chandelier

 Final Result

I’m really satisfied with the result. It was a lot of work because I chose to use the jump rings. I thought it might make it look more realistic instead of using nylon thread and hot glue.