Tumbleweed Chandelier

by makecation

42K17218

Intro: Tumbleweed Chandelier

Did you know chandeliers occur in nature? Thanks to the Fibonacci sequence you can easily find dead twigs and tumbleweeds with graduated tiers resembling a chandelier. With a little love and some tweaking you can easily have a sexy centerpiece to grace your dining room. Layer on some string LEDs and you've got a low energy light source as well!

STEP 1: Tumbleweed Shopping

The best places I've found to go tumbleweed shopping are desolate fields such as the dairy land near my folks' house pictured below.

STEP 2: Score!

The perfect dead plant has been found! The deader the better and this one looks like some sort of hybrid between a tumbleweed and tree branch. It was pretty light and hollow feeling, so I'm guessing it was a bush at one point.

I gathered a few different kinds to have the best selection. Most tumbleweeds have leafy remnants and spiky protrubances that could require more cleanup work, so I suggest finding the smoothest one possible with the least bugs living in it.

STEP 3: Cleanup

Now it's time to tidy up your tumbleweed! I sprayed it down with a compressed air hose to get all the dust and bugs off. If you don't have a compressed air generator, you can buy cans of compressed air at an office supply store. Or you can skip this step if you don't care about dust and dirt.

Next I snap off any unruly branches that jeopardize the overall shape. The bottom has an extra long stem so I took a little hand saw and cut it down.

STEP 4: Lights... Camera... Action! (sans the Camera)

To illuminate your chandelier simply add some string lights (preferably LEDs to keep it low energy). I bought these lights at Target for about ten bucks. You can also get solar powered LED string lights on ebay. Simply drape the lights in and around the tumbleweed, starting from the base and working your way up so that the male plug end is at the top.

I attached the wire of the lights to the branches with a few gator clips, since that's what I had lying around. They seem to have held up nicely so far.

STEP 5: ¡Voila!

My first attempt at hanging the chandelier failed when I discovered my ceiling is practically mush. While screwing in a hanging fixture my face was greeted with plaster dust probably containing amounts of lead and asbestos. So if you live in an apartment building over eighty years old like me you may want to try an alternative method.

Therefore the most MacGyver style method I could think of was to affix the chandelier to the ceiling via staple gun, which has actually proved effective so far.

And voila! A super simple tumbleweed chandelier.

18 Comments

marydecorator 10 years ago

I know what I'm gonna be looking for the next time I take my dog for a walk! ;)

kirnex 13 years ago

That's great. Question, though: had you considered wiring from the base of the branch down, and hanging the branch upside down? That would have looked great too!

wild_hemlock 13 years ago

Very inspiring. I will be attempting this in the near future :)

porcupinemamma 13 years ago

I'm revisiting your Instructable-have you hard wired the chandelier into the socket in the ceiling? If not, how do you turn it off and on?

PillsHere 14 years ago

nice job, well done :D

dadaa 14 years ago

you can also paint it in white and make it stand in a vase with lights on.

porcupinemamma 14 years ago

Hey! Most importantly.  Your chandelier is fabulous!

porcupinemamma 14 years ago

Just thinking...I wonder if there might be brown tape that you could wrap the green wires in so that it blended with the wood?

arttechmommy 14 years ago

 In crafty stores that sell country type things, they sell brown wired string lights.  I just bought some recently!

porcupinemamma 14 years ago

Wow!  I live in a small town; the nearest craft store is an hour away, but I haven't seen them.  Do you think I might find them at a larger store in a city?

scmtngirl 14 years ago

Very cool idea. I like it a lot!

Meggz 14 years ago

I have a lot of kool stuff I have made like this! I used mistletoe to make lamps & lights + table centrepieces & briar forest style hangers for crystals and coloured glass decorations. Even a tabletop Christmas tree for myself & for family. Thanks for your instructable. It is awesome!!

imakeit 14 years ago

Super fun creation, excellent work and post ;)

JBizzle 15 years ago

oh wow! you are so cool. If i had a huge house with a very tall ceiling (like maybe perhaps near stairs) i'd do this on a larger scale with a crape myrtle! they're beautiful trees.

bowmaster 15 years ago

FIRST!!! This idea is awesome.