Inside: How to make a DIY Ornament Chandelier to hang from the ceiling this Christmas. It uses basic craft supplies, clear ball ornaments and tree branches.
So to say this was a ‘challenge’ isn’t far off the mark. Don’t get me wrong, I love the final product I managed to pull off – but it was a labour of love to make this DIY Ornament Chandelier. It took a lot of trial and error that I will share with you today.
While you’re here, you might also want to have a look at some of my other incredible holiday DIYs, decor and crafts! My favourites include my DIY Santa Mailbox, Scrap Wood Holiday Trees, Buffalo Plaid Gift Crates and Scrap Paper Christmas Trees.
Supplies for a DIY Ornament Chandelier
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- 16-22 clear glass or plastic ornaments in an assortment of small, medium and large (I used plastic)
- jewelry thread
- a 12″ wire wreath form
- scissors
- faux greenery or real greenery if you have it
- Small Twinkle Fairy Lights (optional)
Before we get started, this is our December #MonthlyDIYChallenge. So make sure to spread the bloggy love by visiting the other projects at the end of this post.
How to make a DIY Ornament Chandelier
Normally, I have process pictures – but in this case, I have a hodgepodge of pictures of things I tried so bear with me!
I knew I wanted my ornaments to look like they were cascading a bit. To achieve that, I strung the fishing wire across the middle of my wreath form, crossing it over in the middle to make an X-shape. Then, I proceeded to hang four of the largest balls from different length fishing wire – one from each arm of the X.
Then with my mid-sized ornaments and fishing wire, I strung them from the inner circle of the wire and spaced them evenly. (Yes, that picture looks like a big knot. Just wait – I’ll explain.)
And then I stopped and cried. Because the ornaments just weren’t heavy enough to pull the fishing wire taut. And the fishing wire was all curly and wavy and it looked SOOOO awful. Think Carrot Top instead of Connie Britton. Not to mention, fishing wire is really hard to tie on itself, so I was doing real fisherman’s knots over and over again and my fingers were sore and cut and bleeding. This was the point when I almost gave up. I even tried using the weight of some twinkle lights to pull things down and it looked like an even bigger, sparklier, hot mess.
That’s when I remembered I had some jewellery cord. It is meant to hold things that are light and still lay flat. So I UNDID all those knots in the fishing wire and redid the whole thing with the stretchier, more forgiving, jewellery cord. Things were looking up. But now I had realized that I still didn’t really know how I was going to a) hang it up and b) disguise the wreath form.
So I practiced hanging it with some ribbon. I figured out that by moving the ornaments and spacing them , I could get the form to hang parallel. So I proceeded to add the remaining small sized ornaments around the outer edge of the form and fill in some of the gaps while it was hanging up. It was much easier to work this way versus on a table top. But it was still a mega pain in the rear and I was seriously stabby at this point. While the jewellery thread is superior to the fishing wire, it’s still a jerk. Don’t say I didn’t warn you folks. 🙂
The last hurdle was disguising the wreath form and all the little cord pieces that were sticking up from the bazillion knots I’d made. I wanted something that would help keep the ornaments in their correct position but something that wasn’t too visually heavy. I decided to cut a remnant piece of white fabric into 2″ strips and tie them around the form, essentially creating a ‘rag wreath’.
It was horrible. Dan came into the living room from the kitchen and said it looked like I had wrapped it in medical gauze and toilet paper.
So, at that point, I did what any good DIYer up against a challenge deadline would do – I drank some wine, climbed up on a ladder and collected all the boughs I had cut to adorn my china cabinet and shoved them onto the wreath form. I added some cute Noma Glitter lights (which I love btw) and voila.
I decided to keep the ribbon that hangs it from the ceiling. I have plenty of it left over and I’ll use it to decorate our tree, so it will all tie in eventually.
Speaking of our tree – see that big blank space to the left of the china cabinet? That is where it will go! I love how Christmas is an excuse to rearrange all the furniture.
It was hard to get a shot of the twinkle lights doing their thing (seeing as it was the middle of the day) – but it really is quite pretty.
In the end, this project really wasn’t that bad – and it is a nice addition to our wintery decor for December and January.
Hey! Now go check out all these other blogs to see what they got up to with clear glass ornaments for the December #MonthlyDIYChallenge!
Other Christmas Chandelier Ideas for you
Domestic Imperfection has a neat take on a similar idea for a hanging chandelier with greenery. It’s so pretty with the red ribbon. You should see how she tests out hanging it! Genius!
Craftily Ever After figures out a way to turn a string of Christmas lights into a chandelier using a thrifted light fixture. This is definitely a neat project. 
Over on Dollar Store Crafts, there’s a couple links to tutorials that show how to turn a hula hoop into a chandelier light fixture using string lights as well. I think you’d need a really big space to make something like this work.
My Sweet Things has a simple and neutral version of the hanging wreath chandelier that is stunning. I think this one might be my favorite. 
Here are a few of my other posts you might like!
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