100 Days: Chandelier Tease

This could be my favorite Halfland creation to date. It's one of those things that happen when I give myself the luxury of time to build things like this. I didn't know what or how I wanted the cottage chandelier exactly. I knew I wanted it to look at first glance like a normal crystal chandelier but then when one looked closer, it would be "half" somehow.

Ester Jantzen brought over a huge box of genuine vintage chandelier crystals on a previous visit. She had salvaged them from somewhere and intuited I could make use of them. Bless her. I started taking the brass wired strands apart to grade the crystal sizes and was searching my mind for how to translate them into the set. I hit upon using the amazing wooden myrtle pods that Halfland's Official Naturalist, Marci Knowles, sent me several months back.

When I set an open myrtle pod over the top of a small crystal drop, like a half woodland/half traditional chandelier would be--I went bananas! That was my answer. To blend the two worlds together in one element.

When I looked at all my reference images of interesting Halflandian chandeliers and was wondering how I could make six similar chandelier arm shapes I struck upon the notion of using crooks in the large collection of seasoned natural tree branches I had on hand here. I attached them together in a spoke pattern using drilled holes and coiled wire joints, cut them to length and fashioned candle holders out of wooden shapes and real nutmeg pods that Marci had sent earlier. (Where would I be without ma' girls?!) The holders were harmonized as one piece with iron paint and rust.

I proceeded to make led-lighted candles and waxed vellum shades for each holder out of small plastic cups with iron-painted rims top and bottom. The pattern on the shades was made by daubing sumptuous red pastel dust with liquid beeswax with my finger tips. It made an interesting spider web pattern that I then coated with burnished hard beeswax to preserve. The translucent shades appear red during daylight and glow warmly in amber at night.

Looking forward to finishing this piece and installing it in the very center of Rana's roof.