Ballard Inspired Chandelier

This weekend was our community garage sale that's held in the parking lot of our Club House twice a year.
I live in a gated country club community where the HOA (home owners association) does not allow individual garage or yard sales, but does provide a venue twice a year for home owners to sell unwanted items.
How it works is, if you want to sell stuff you have to rent as many parking spaces as you want and set up shop for the day.
All of the money that's made off of the spaces goes to a local elementary school, and all the money the home owner makes off of their stuff is theirs to keep.
Anyway this is a big deal in my neighborhood and I was there bright and early!

I was there with a mission... to find a chandelier to replace the crappy one I got a Lowes on sale a few years back.  The previous owners of my house used the dining area as a den or something and where a chandelier should have been there was a plain Jane white ceiling fan.

That was the reason for my mission... to find a chandelier that closely resembles the existing one that is in the lounge area off of the dining room, I figured that since all the homes here were built by the same developer, my odds where pretty good of someone wanting to unload light fixtures that they replaced since moving in.

Jack-pot! I found this fixture within minutes of arriving, it was priced at $50.00 and I got it for $40.00 Mission Accomplished!

Tessa checking out the new find... and the dust!
After a thorough clean up, my hubby hung it up for me.

I have always lusted over the Claire Chandelier from Ballard's... big surprise what do I NOT lust over from Ballard's?



My garage sale find is similar in color has 5 arms and acanthus leaves too, so I'm off to a good start recreating this look.  I had some left over prisms from a couple of old wax catchers that I used to dress up the chandelier in the lounge area, along with some faux crystal garland that I pickup up at Hobby Lobby last Christmas.

With some floral wire and lots of fiddling around with it... this is what I came up with.

 I just followed the contoures of the fixtures with the strips of the garland and twisted little pieces of the wire around it, hung the prisms to the leaves and there ya have it.
It's by no means an exact match to the Claire, but with a $299.00 price tag versus the $40.00 I spent, I would have to say it's close enough for me!


A view of it with the Ballard inspired prints I did.



Old light fixture

 

New Chandelier

With the right inspiration I went from this...

To this

                                                          

This little project has certainly made me happy and to helped to get my week off to a good start, I hope yours is off to a good start too.

I am linked up to,

Someday Crafts