Jellyfish Chandelier

I saw this chandelier on Pinterest and knew it would be perfect for our Under The Sea baby shower, I just had to figure out how to make it myself.

After a trip to Michaels, I found a bunch of wire ribbon in their $1 ribbon bins that were pretty colors of the ocean. I picked greens, light blues, a few lavender, and some deep ocean blue glittery spools.

Since each spool was 3 yards, I cut them to lengths of 1 yard long (3 ribbons per spool), 9 inches (4 per spool), and 6 inches (6 per spool). I liked the varied lengths, and tried to alternate colors and lengths to keep things more interesting.

You can see in this photo, I just tied each piece of ribbon in different places along the chandelier arms with a simple knot.

After tying your ribbons on, simply scrunch up the ribbon in your hand. I did a messy accordion fold all the way up to the knot. Hold for a few seconds, so that the warmth from your hand can set the ribbon.
 

Release. With the wire in the ribbon, it should stay and look like this:

Next, grab the bottom of the ribbon, and gently pull downward, until you get the ribbon to the length and kinks you desire. You can always adjust a little bit. 

And here is how it looks with all the ribbons completed. Forgive the dark photo, it was late at night when I was decorating! One last step left... the jellyfish body.

I hunted around for rice paper, as they originally used for this chandelier, but there was just no way to make it work around my ancient fixture. So I thought of the next best thing... tulle. I bought 2 spools of 12" x 25 foot long tulle, also at Michaels, found in the wedding supply aisle for $2.99/spool. I actually ended up only using one spool for the whole light, because I liked the translucency of it.

I just took the spool and tied the first end to the top of the chandelier. Then I wrapped the whole chandelier a few times, being sure to get even coverage. Then I tucked the other end into the top of the chandelier, so that I would know where it would be when I wanted to remove it.

Here is how it looked with the lights on:

I actually was fearful that the tulle would melt or burn by leaving the lights on, so since we have a ton of natural light in our dining room, it worked out perfect as just a cool centerpiece with the lights off. In the original chandelier inspiration photo., they actually have shades over the bulbs, all of which were covered with the rice paper. This allows them to keep the lights on without becoming flammable! But mine was pretty enough without being lit.

I was really happy with how it turned out and how easy it was to create! Stay tuned for one of my longest posts on how to make the other star, Wally the Whale cake, later in the week!