Skill Level: Easy

Time Required: One day

Cost: $$

Alcoholic Drinks Consumed: Surprisingly few

A DIY floral chandelier? We know, it sounds ridiculous. But what else are you to do when you find a spare chandelier chillin’ in your mom’s garage?

My mom had her chandelier replaced ages ago and in true Desi Mom form has kept it in the garage, “just in case.” We first started eyeing it in the summer, knowing that it was too pretty to not do something with it. Well, we put ourselves in a bride’s shoes. You’ve got your bridal shower, Mehndi party, maybe a religious event or two, and don’t all of those events need décor? Even if you don’t have a magnificent chandelier sitting in your garage, chances are there you’ll be able to find something that you can decorate where this DIY will come in handy:

• The handrail of a staircase inside or outside of your home
• A hanging egg chair
• Ribbons or thread so you can hang it wherever you want

The key to this DIY isn’t the chandelier (although it definitely makes the end result more impressive), but the fake flowers that we chose to decorate it with. Here’s how we did it.

The Supplies

• Fake flowers (cost depends on how much you need)
• Flower ties (Probably not what it is actually called. The good people at Michael’s will know what I’m talking about)
• Pruning Shears (something sharper is ideal)
• Chandelier (or whatever it is that you’re adding the floral décor to)

STEP ONE – Pick the Flowers

We took a team outing to Michael’s, AKA our second home, and spent a lot of time walking around looking at the different types of fake flowers they had. We didn’t really have a budget in mind, and if you do you should still be able to find really pretty options in your price point. The nice part is that one bouquet was going to yield us multiple flowers (since we were planning on cutting them up), so in most cases we only needed the one bouquet. For our base flowers (the pretty lavender ones and the white ones), we doubled up.

STEP TWO – Cut the Flowers

This part…yeah. It was a challenge. We got pruning shears ($3 each from Walmart) and were REALLY surprised when those didn’t cut the flowers easily. Which we then realized was because of the wire on the inside. Maybe wire cutters will work better? Or fancier pruning shears? It wasn’t impossible, but there’s probably something else you could use that would be easier.

We cut and saved as much as we could, including the leaves, mainly because we weren’t sure how much we would want to use. Also because those flowers cost us more than we anticipated (holy $60 bucks), we were gonna use every piece if it killed us.

STEP THREE – Putting It All Together

Step 3 was (obviously) the best out of all 3, because seeing those colors come together and the effect of the swinging purple flowers was SO fun! We started with our base color (light purple) and secured flowers and leaves to each other and our chandelier using the floral ties (again, no idea what it’s really called). We used the pruning shears to cut long strips of the ties (which worked SO much better than when we cut the flowers) and went around the chandelier bit-by-bit. We made sure to space out our pops of color so that no matter what angle you were to look at the chandelier, you’d get the same effect.

The big question, was it worth it?

Definitely! We were really happy with the colors that we picked for this DIY, and it helped that it wasn’t a super challenging or complicated project to take on.

How do you plan on using this DIY for your event? Are you going to go treasure hunting in your mom’s garage? Using furniture or décor that you’ve already got lying around the house? Give us an update at [email protected]

Tips or comments about this article? Have a topic you want us to research and write about? Drop us an email at [email protected]