DIY Sputnik Chandelier

I've always dreamed of having a gorgeous sputnik chandelier, but they are usually on the smaller side and in the many thousands of dollars. I had planned on investing a little bit more of the house budget on the dining area's light fixture because it would be basically the first thing you'd see when walking into our apartment. I wanted big and beautiful.

After deciding to buy the Gossip Girl sconces, I had sort of eaten up my lighting budget and needed to figure out something very inexpensive for the dining room. I thought the ubiquitous IKEA Maskros (which means dandelion in Swedish) might be a good base for a DIY sputnik.

I had some help from my Mom and Dad, who were in town visiting at the time. We busted out the entire project in a night and had the thing hung in the morning. I love projects like that!! (THANKS Mom and Dad! xo)

It's a pretty simple project, with not a lot of tools required. I went with the 32" diameter fixture because we have a big open space, but I would recommend the 22" fixture (which is only $49!) for more traditional rooms.

Like almost all IKEA products, the Maskros comes disassembled. There are, I think, 124 white flowers to attach to long metal rods.

image via HERE

The white, plasticy paper flowers are about 5" wide. This is totally personal preference, but the thing I don't love the most about the Maskros in it's original state is all the shadows the flowers create and I needed this fixture to be a functional light source first and foremost. So I played around a bit with the proportions to shorten the petals and decided I like a 2.5" diameter best.

I used a clear (making it easy to find the center) plastic cup with a 2.5" base to trace a circle on each of the flowers. A little tip: I find that projects with many steps of many multiples are done best and fastest by focusing on one step at a time. I traced all the flowers first. Then I cut all the flowers, etc. Don't get ahead of yourself in the steps for the sake of accuracy and efficiency.

Once the tracing was all finished, I cut down the flowers. Then I pulled out my trusty old quart of Ralph Lauren Regency Metallics in 'Parlor Gold' to paint out the florettes.

If the weather had been better and if I didn't live in NYC, I totally would have spray painted the whole thing using Rustoleum's metallic line in the Brass finish. But, I am actually really happy with the look of the hand painting. It didn't take that long, and I think the end look is a little less flat than spray paint - more mottled, like real gilded metal.

While one side of the florettes was drying, we painted the rest of the fixture, including the arms (below), the cord and the ceiling mount.

Once both sides of the florettes had been painted and the fixture frame had two good coats of paint, we started gluing these adorable little amuse bouche plates on the florettes. I used two boxes for the larger size Maskros.

Fabritac is hands down my favorite adhesive and it worked really well for this project. Super tight hold and a fast drying time. I needed only a small dollop on the bottom of each plate to attach the flower.

We let the glue set up for an hour or so and then we attached the florettes to the stems as they were designed to be attached. There are little prongs (the button looking pieces in the center) that snap the flowers in place on the arms. Grace was in charge of most of the snapping.

We used a fabric roll on two chairs for holding the arms, which worked really well for letting the paint and glue dry.

My super handy dad took care of the electrical aspects and then we all worked together to attach the huge arms to the frame. It was fun to step down from the ladder and take it all in at once!

The large size was just what my dining space needed. And it's so great to have an additional light source above the table. I was surprised at how much it brightened the space - even with just the one bulb.

I love that the plastic plates have that hint of green! I think they really look like glass and the painted paper/plastic actually kind of passes for brass.

It has that Sputnik vibe, but it's definitely doing it's own thing. Not bad, for about $100 in supplies!

I'm so glad we cut down the flowers. It doesn't scream IKEA Maskros this way and the little shadows are actually quite pretty. Sort of like polka dots (I keep thinking of the Kate Spade Twirl bottle!)

Amy Butler's Chandelier

I just finished the coolest DIY project using the IKEA Maskros. I can't wait to share the photos and tutorial with you very soon (probably Monday)!

In the meantime, isn't Amy Butler's gold spray painted version so great? Apartment Therapy did a pretty amazing whole-house tour here.

Dear Jenny: What to do with ceiling fans?

Spring arrived with a vengeance and suddenly I want to buy more fans and crank up the AC! Apparently we've all got the same problem, because I got about ten Dear Jenny submissions about ceiling fans! Here's one of them:

We live in Texas, which I think has fantastic weather, but for certain, July and August are hot, hot, hot. It is basically a requirement that the rooms upstairs have ceiling fans to try and keep energy costs down in the hot months. All of the bedrooms are upstairs in my house, and though I would love to put an amazing light fixture in every room, it is just not practical. I look through magazines and style books, and there are no ceiling fans in sight! How can a ceiling fan be stylish and work in a space?

It's true. Ceiling fans are not the prettiest of room accessories. I was raised in Arizona though, so I know first hand how necessary they are in many homes.

I think the best rule of thumb for ceiling fan purchases is to keep it really really simple. No matter how much you spend, I don't really think ceiling fans can look cool or pretty. So go for less conspicuous, like Darryl Carter and Steven Gambrel did here:

Also, I know a lot of times this isn't an option, but if there is any way you can use a fan with no light kit, I much prefer that look. My very favorite is this fan. It's really (shockingly) inexpensive, has great reviews and looks very streamlined.

One trick I've seen used is to paint your fan the color of your ceiling (motor, blades and all). That would be easy with something simple like this fan with a light.

If you have to keep the light kit on the fan, my favorite solution is to add a drum shade to cover up those often-ugly ceiling fan lights.

Better Homes and Gardens


Dwellers without Decorators

What about you readers, any favorite good-looking ceiling fans? Or how have you upgraded your old fixtures to be less offensive?

Gossip Girl Sconces

I bookmarked this post from Things That Inspire (a really lovely blog) waaay back in 2007. Holly featured some screen shots of these sconces on the set of Gossip Girl (P.S. remember that first season of GG? When the plot was semi-interesting and the fashion oh-so-good?).

Anyway, I remember noticing those sconces on the show too, and seeing Holly's post confirmed that I wanted/needed/could no longer live without these sconces in my life. To me, they are lighting perfection. A little traditional, a little modern, a little floral, a little quirky.

Somehow I survived for a couple years without them (when I first saw the post no one really knew who made the sconces), but I thought of them fondly from time to time.

A follow up post left some of us wondering if they were made by French lighting designer Jean Royere, who made these lovelies below, priced at about $30,000 each. So beautiful, but...yikes.

Fast forward a couple years. I have this situation in my house (at least this is how it looked mid-project a month or two ago):

I love the star wall sconces, but I've decided to move them around the corner to the daybed wall. They'll be perfect there, but I was at square one again with sconces above my bookshelf.

On Bowery, sort of where China Town is melting into SOHO, there is a string of lighting stores that carry some nice lines like Circa and Visual Comfort. I bought these Thomas OBrien sconces for a client there and thought about just getting a pair for myself too.

But then I stumbled into a little store on Delancey called Lighting Craftsman. You know when a place looks not at all promising from the outside and then you walk in and your insides start screaming and freaking out and you're all ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh under your breath? That's how I felt when I walked into this place that does all custom brass light fixtures.

And then, my brain completely exploded. BAM:

Turns out the GG set designer commissioned this shop to make the sconces and they still offer the design to retail and trade customers. They aren't exactly cheap at $200-$300 depending on the size and the number of arms, but they are really, really lovely (will be even more so with new shades a la the Royere numbers above) and I'll be so thrilled to see them in my home some time next week. It's been a long time coming.

DIY Branch Chandelier

Like DIY modern art, it is also tricky to really pull off DIY lighting solutions. There have only been a few projects out there that I really like (here was a good one).

But I can't get over how great this lighting project is. The owners of Abilene Bar in the Carrol Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn needed inexpensive lighting for their restaurant and came up with this idea.

They layered many of these simple and inexpensive socket adapters from Home Depot together to create a coral or branch effect. The best part is there is absolutely no hard-wiring required. The first socket just screws right into your existing light bulb socket. Completely genius!

I like the white sockets seen here, but I'd also consider spray painting the outside of the sockets red or gold.

Image sources: Time Out NYC, NY Mag