Habakkuk 3: Mason Jar Chandelier

Mason jar chandeliers are becoming quite popular. I first ran into them on pinterest (of course)

and saw many of this type.

I liked it a lot, but I liked these better:

and

AND THEN I FOUND THIS!

SWOON!

Ok, so I knew what I wanted to try to make. I started watching Craig’s List for a chandelier that was the right shape.
I found this one…

The ad written for it was hilarious.
“Awful chandelier must go. It’s been replaced with something much more tasteful.
Builder threw this piece of junk in when the house was built 10 years ago. We can’t BELIEVE the prior owners never replaced it. But then again their taste was white, off-white and beige – when they really wanted to spice things up.
Get it soon before it goes to re-store and uglies up someone else’s dining room.
This ugly light works perfectly and is in perfect condition, although ugly.
Hopefully you have bad taste, will like this chandelier, and come give me a few bucks for it.”
Truly beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?!
So I bought that “ugly” chandelier and brought it home to de-uglify it.

I left the light shades off (those may go to Good Will)

and painted the whole thing copper.

I then began the process of what my daughter called “re-uglifying” it. LOL I chose two green paints, one an ivy green and one a turquoise. I didn’t have a sponge, so decided to sacrifice an old washcloth, which I wadded up and used to dab paint onto the chandelier

first the ivy green

and then the turquoise.

I let that dry and mixed some light blue paint with water to make a wash.

I gave the whole chandelier a light coating with the blue wash. (I did end up going back later and adding more copper and re-doing the wash as I felt I’d gone a bit overboard in the turquoise.) Now the chandelier had that old copper verdigris look that I liked so much in the inspiration picture.
I tried and tried to think of a way to make it work with the mason jars facing up, like in the picture. But the pictured chandelier was made for candles. Using it for light bulbs meant I’d need to find a way to make a hole in the bottom, and I couldn’t find a good safe way to do that. I even called my uncle who does stained glass to ask him for advice, but the best he could come up with meant going out and buying new tools. So, we rethought it.

One of my sons came up with the idea of gluing mason jar rings into each light sconce, which we did with five minute epoxy. Genius! (We’ll be using the curly flourescent bulbs so there shouldn’t be too much heat generated, but we’ll watch it at first to be sure.)