Light Fixture: DIY Yarn Pendant

Idea:

D was not fond of the brass light fixtures in the bedrooms and hall. Frankly, neither was I. The difference between him and I is I am a lot more passive about replacing things that are clean and still work perfectly fine. Obviously he won because I’m posting about the replacement of the office (3rd bedroom) fixture.

Inspiration:

Light fixture shopping is NOT easy! I spent countless hours searching in stores and online for the right light fixture for each room. I scored fixtures for bedroom 1 and 2 and the hallway but by the time it came to shopping for a fixture for the office, I was pooped and sick of spending money. The Random Light was the only fixture I liked for the office but I couldn’t get myself to spend the money. Thank goodness it was so easy to DIY! I found many tutorials by googling ‘yarn pendant’ but MadeByGirl explained it best.

Interesting Points:

• Use a pendant kit rather than making your own fixture. I went with the Westinghouse pendant kit which comes in all types of finishes.
• Use a beachball as your mold. A balloon is not a perfect sphere and is difficult to deflate slowly and a toy ball is too difficult to extract.
• Apply Vaseline to the ball to reduce stickiness between the yarn and the ball.
• Mark a hole where the pendant kit will be inserted but, more importantly, mark a hole either at the bottom of the yarn pendant or off to the side of the first hole (much like the random light) to give yourself room to change the bulb. I made the mistake of not having a second hole. I had to move the yarn at the bottom of the fixture in order to stick my hand in, attach the yarn pendant to the pendant kit and, also to insert the bulb. Thank goodness for LED bulbs because I will not need to touch that pendant for a long time!
• Do all work over a drop cloth. This project can get messy.
• Soak the yarn in the stiffener (preferably in a bowl) and then as you wrap the soaked yarn around the ball, drag over the bowl of stiffener one last time. Do this rather than wrapping the ball first and applying the stiffener to the ball. This will reduce the amount of glue ‘webbing’ between the loops of yarn and ensures maximum stiffness of the yarn.
• Deflate slowly, lookout for pieces of yarn that might have stuck to the ball and detach.

Ingredients:

• Westinghouse Mini Pendant Kit
• Stiffy Ribbon Stiffener
• Beach Ball
• LED bulb
• PVC old-work ceiling box
• yarn
• latex gloves
• drop cloth

Images: