DIY Drum Shade With Crystals Tutorial

I'm sure you've all seen the drum shade lights with crystals hanging from them. I love them! They are everywhere right now. I've seen them priced all the way from right under $100 to right under $1,000. The one below is priced at $199.99 at Lamps Plus,.

I was determined that I could make one for much cheaper than that. It took a while to work out the details, but with a little help from my mom we were able to come up with an idea using common materials.

Below is what you'll need.

Pendant Light Kit
Plastic Embroidery Canvas
1 10" wooden embroidery hoop
1 8" wooden embroidery hoop
Metal Chain
2 Flat Washers (not pictured)
Thin wire (not pictured)
Drum shade (not pictured) -- I used a 14" drum shade
*There is also a double light socket pictured and some small hooks but we didn't end up using those.

Here are the Steps to make your own DIY Drum Shade Chandelier with Crystals.

1. You'll be using the inside piece of the embroidery hoops. In other words, the solid wood piece. Take a flexible tape measure and measure around the inside of each of your hoops. Divide the measurement by 3 and place a mark at each division.

2. Cut your plastic embroidery canvas to the height you want. I cut to the height of five squares. Then cut to the length you need for the outside of each of your embroidery hoops.

3. Staple your cut plastic canvas to the outside of each hoop. Remember you are stapling to the outside of the solid wood piece of the embroidery hoops.

4.  Determine the length of your chains. You will need 3 chains of the same length for each hoop. The SMALLER hoop will have the LONGEST chain. The chains will be attached to your embroidery hoops with the plastic canvas. Your crystals will be attached to the plastic canvas so the length of your chains will depend on the length of your crystals and how much of them you want showing from underneath the shade. Once you have determined the length of your chains attach them to the INSIDE of the embroidery hoops on each of the the marks you made. When you cut your chain be sure to give yourself a little extra in case you mess up.

5. Take the three chains and tie them to one of the flat washers with string. Do this for each hoop. The painters tape is holding the extra chain down.

6. Take the cord of your pendant lamp and put it through the washer with the smaller hoop attached. Next take your cord and put it through the washer that is attached to the larger hoop. Then you'll want to put the cord through the middle of your shade. You'll want your light to be hanging at this point (not on the ceiling though). We had ours clamped to a board hanging between saw horses.

7. Take two of your chosen crystals and attach to the respective hoops so you can make sure the lengths are where you want them.

8. Once you have the lengths where you want, you'll need to disassemble your creation. Take a piece of thin wire and attach your chains to your washers. Cut off the excess chain and your string.

9. Reassemble. Small hoop, large hoop on the pendant cord. (Here is a picture without the shade.) Add the drum shade to the assembly.

10. Hang your pendant assembly from the ceiling at your desired height.

11. Hang your crystals from the plastic canvas. We used Christmas decoration hooks to make things easy.

12. Sit back and enjoy your creation!! When the light is on you can see a slight shadow from one of the hoops. I don't think this is a drawback as it's not very noticeable unless you are looking for it. In some of the shots below it looks like the hoops are hanging crooked but this is just the angle of the pictures. If you divide your hoop measurement into three, make your chains even, and hang your crystals around so the weight is evenly distributed, they will hang straight.

** After we got all of the crystals hung from the plastic canvas we discovered that the weight of the crystals had brought the hoops down farther than we originally desired. We solved this by taking a few lengths of the chain and tying them to each other with a piece of the wire.

I estimate the total cost of the project was a little over $30.
Pendant Light $15
Lamp Shade $3 (from Goodwill)
Crystals $6 (from a different lamp bought at Goodwill, pictured below)
Embroidery Hoops $1.30 each
Plastic Canvas $1.30
Bead Chain $5

I'm partying here:
Nifty Thrifty Sunday at Nifty Thrifty Things
Fridays at Redoux
Simply Creations at Simple Home Life
Spring Thing Party at Debbie Doos
Nifty Thrifty Tuesday at Coastal Charm
If it's not Baroque Tuesday Link Party
Transformation Thursday at Shabby Creek Cottage

Pet Door Install

I don't know about you all but I am ready for winter to be over! I'm tired of getting shocked when I touch anything. I'm tired of the cold. This past weekend it didn't get above 40 degrees. And I live in the south! I can't even imagine how my northern friends are feeling. Since the weather was a bit too cold for outdoor projects I decided to take care of some things on my to do list that didn't involve me being outside. First on the list, install a pet door for the cats.

I decided to install a pet door on the door that leads from the finished side of my basement to the unfinished side of my basement. The cats love being on the unfinished side of the basement so I had been leaving the door propped open for them. Only problem is the finished side of the basement is heated and the unfinished side isn't. So as you can imagine I was losing lots of heat this way.

First thing we did was mark the height where the cat door would be. The instructions tell you to stand your cat up against the door and make a mark at their shoulder height. The instruction writers have clearly never tried to hold a squirming cat while marking the correct height. It's definitely a two person job. Needless to say there are no pictures of this step. That would have made it a three person job.

After you've got your door marked, take the door off the hinges and set it on a pair of sawhorses.

The pet door came with a template. You take your template and place it in the middle of the mark on your door. We then taped down the template and traced around the edges of the template with a pencil.

Next is the fun part. Ladies you can do this yourself! We used a Dremel Multi Tool to cut out our template. It was a hollow core door so I'm not sure if the Dremel tool would be the tool you would want to use if you were cutting through a solid wood door.

After you've cut around the edges of your template use a flat blade screwdriver to pop out the piece you've just cut.

Then use the Dremel tool to clean up your edges. Once you have nice, clean edges flip the door over and cut out the other side.

Next you actually install the cat door. The instructions provided were not very helpful here. This step was rather frustrating. This step also probably took the longest time. Nonetheless we managed to get the cat door installed. So far the cats haven't figured out how to use it, but I've been shoving them through each side of it. I'm sure they'll get the hang of it eventually! :-)