After months of working on it, it's finally DONE! I have to admit it, I LOVE it! I was concerned that I wouldn't like it because I really did start to loathe this project, but now that it's up and all done, I'm so in love with it and SO glad I stuck it out! I finished it this morning and thankfully T is a good sport, so he took down the original light and put up the replacement light. The replacement is actually just a simple plain bulb light. I forgot to take a picture from underneath, but the "capiz" fixture just rests around it. It's hung on hooks and these staple things.
Now that it's done, allow me to pass a good tip on how to make this project go faster and smoother. Since I hot glued my shells to the fishing wire, it took FOREVER to attach each shell. Thankfully on Friday night I found a new way of attaching them and I so wish I would have found it earlier. It made the process go super fast. I would tape the fishing wire to my counter and slide the "shells" underneath it. I would move them around and play with the layout until I found the layout I wanted. I would do 5 strands at a time. Then I would go with my hot glue gun and dab little beads of glue on each shell and move on. In the time it would take me to do one strand normally, I was able to kick out 5. By the time I put the last drop of glue on the final shell, the first strand was usually dry so I could pull them up and start over. I was able to finish about 40 strands of shells while I watched The Wizard of Oz on my iPad!
After I finished it all, I did the math to figure out how many shells were made. I ended up cutting and attaching 1,197 shells. I about fell over when I found that out. I knew that it was a lot of them, but when I actually did the math and found out exactly how many it was I was really surprised. This project ultimately cost me about $25 which isn't too bad and I have many intentions of leaving it up for many years to come. I figured any project that I invest that many hours into is going to stay up for
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| Original light. |
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| New Light -- Off |
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| New Light -- On |
Now that it's done, allow me to pass a good tip on how to make this project go faster and smoother. Since I hot glued my shells to the fishing wire, it took FOREVER to attach each shell. Thankfully on Friday night I found a new way of attaching them and I so wish I would have found it earlier. It made the process go super fast. I would tape the fishing wire to my counter and slide the "shells" underneath it. I would move them around and play with the layout until I found the layout I wanted. I would do 5 strands at a time. Then I would go with my hot glue gun and dab little beads of glue on each shell and move on. In the time it would take me to do one strand normally, I was able to kick out 5. By the time I put the last drop of glue on the final shell, the first strand was usually dry so I could pull them up and start over. I was able to finish about 40 strands of shells while I watched The Wizard of Oz on my iPad! 
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