Same Project Different Results {A Craft Fail}

Aside from the dining room projects one other room in my house that has been getting spiffed up lately is my home office. Due to some building renovations at work, I’ve been working from home for a bit and it was the perfect excuse to really take the plunge and decorate the space to my liking.

It’s a room I haven’t done much to at all, hence the lack of posts about it. Last we were in there I think I showed you how to wallpaper the back of a bookcase.

Well there have been plenty of updates. But one at a time friends! I promise I will show them all 🙂

Let’s start with the lighting. In this room actually there is an overhead light. A rare thing for an old house. Get ready for the web’s most exciting {and apparently blurry} photo.  Here it is.

Yes that was the bare light bulb I’ve had in my office for almost 2 years. Somebody call House Beautiful right now!

One day while on one of my favorite craft supply sites I found this piece. A three tiered light fixture that would work with my bare bulb.

I cut off all the little dangly things that were not quite my style and I had this. Kind of a nice blank slate right?

I’ve stared at it for months trying to figure out just what to do to make it perfect. Maybe cover the layers with fabric? Get some kid of reflective pieces to string on it?

And then it hit me. My wax paper chandelier! I’d try to make another. But of course since I had already done wax paper, why not try another material?

Enter this cool shiny paper I found at my local art supply store. It would be perfect. I’d punch out the circles, sew them together and make strings to go over the wire pieces. I even got some shiny black paper to use as an accent on it too. It would look all Hollywood Regency up over my bare light blub. Or so I thought.Oh not so fast. First I ran out of paper so I hung it up there to see where things were going.

In the mean time I found a fun ceiling medallion to punch up the light area since it was so sparse.

And did this work? Oh no. Craft fail. The paper, since it was totally opaque, covered all the light from the bulb and it was like a UFO streaming down in the middle of my office. No light got through the paper and it was so dim.

None of the black accent circles lined up, the white on the back showed through too much, it was all a hot mess.

Craft fail! I’d ran out of paper so I hung it to see what it would look like and now know I don’t even have to get more. Darn. And they were only $2.50 a sheet.

And I love the look of the circles and everything, too bad. But I took them all down. So what will I do with my hundreds of sewn-together silver circles?

I’m thinking garland for the Christmas tree. Right?

Update – I did use these for the holidays, come see them here.