DIY Pottery Barn Bellora Chandelier Knock-Off .... when you can't afford something, make it!

When we bought our new house the lighting was straight from the 80's...not knocking the 80's they did have some rockin' hair and of course I was born in that decade, but lighting has come a long way baby!
  I will remind you of what I had originally in the dining room:

See the tiny globe light and the terrible 80's ceiling fan all on the vaulted ceiling!

After staring at the lights I decided I was stuck and was going to need to call an electrician to move the lights where I needed them to be.... :(  (this meant dollars I didn't want to spend!)  Until mom genius mom, said, "Why don't you just swag the chandelier from the spot it's at to where you want it to be?"  A-MAZ-ING idea!!  I had never thought of that....had I looked in my master bath, maybe I could have come up with this one. (The pendant lights in there are swagged.)  But all credit goes to my mom!   Then the race was on to figure out what I wanted there.  I say race, we moved in at the beginning of September and I wanted pretty chandeliers right away by Thanksgiving.

So I started looking in my favorite place:

 I come up with the beautiful Bellora Chandelier:

She is breath-taking and bubbly!!  I wanted her, problem was I needed two and the are $299 each!!  I refused to pay thought that was a little high for my budget of, we just had a baby and bought a new house!

So I looked around some more.  I found this one from lightinabox.com :

Also, bubbly, but way to gold...fixable though with a can of spray paint.  Still to pricey $236!  Come on people!

So I decided, I can do this myself!

I checked on craigslist and visited my local Habitat for Humanity Restore (love this place) and came up with these beauties:

small chandelier (don't mind my messy garage)

large chandelier

I paid $30 for the little one and $50 for the big one.  They got a few coats of flat black to start with and then a final spray of Rustoleum's hammered bronze :) Then she looked like this:

For some reason my complete lack of camera skills it looks more pewter, but it looks oil rubbed bronze in real-life :)

Then I had to come up with the tiny glass bubbles....called a local glass blower, he said it would be around $150, if he decided it was worth his time.  Called PB and asked to purchase replacement bubbles...they don't sell them.  I googled EVERYWHERE the only thing I could come up with were way to big or out of my price range. :(  On a trip to Hobby Lobby I perused the Christmas ornaments hoping that their was something similar and "Oh, what to my wondering eye would appear, but a tiny glass ball and eight tiny reindeer!"  I passed on the reindeer and grabbed 20, glass balls.  I could do $1.99 each, but it gets BETTER!  THEY WERE HALF PRICE!!!! So, I got them for $.99 each :)  I was so excited I called my mom at work to tell her....she's was excited for me, but had a tone of "my daughter-might-need-to-be-committed" in her voice.  She may be right, but that brought my total for BOTH chandeliers to: buh,buh,buh,buh,buh (that's a drumroll) $110 including paint and hardware for hanging!!!

They look like this now:

-Make your life beautiful!
Kari