Light-Bulb Moment

A few days ago I had a light-bulb moment.  Literally!

Each of you should know by now that I am absolutely in love with this chandelier from West Elm.  In fact, it happens to be one of the highest priorities on my wish list.

The only down-side to this beautiful chandelier is the price.  West Elm lists this baby at $259 big ones, but because I am head-over-heels, I always figured this would be one of my "splurge" items.

Luckily for me, I came across this lamp idea at Homebysunset.com:

When I learned that this lamp is actually a DIY'd version of another West Elm lamp, the light-bulb in my noggen went off.  It was then that I realized a DIY version of my favorite chandlelier might be possible.

I started to brainstorm a general plan, and here's what I came up with:

This would be the basic frame for the chandelier.  I'm thinking I could just use some 1x2's from Home Depot (98 cents for 8 feet, according to their website), use paint or stain for the finish, and somehow attach the decorative pieces.

Here are the building plans:

It looks like I would need two 1x2's from Home Depot for this frame.  Here is the cut list:

The holes that will be drilled in the board on the bottom will be for the light fixtures.  Ikea has the Basisk sconces that are $16.99.

...or the Minut sconces for $29.99 (upgraded finish, if you ask me).

If I decided to use the Minut sconces, I would probably redesign the frame to accomodate three lights instead of four.  I figure even if I spend around $100.00 to make the chandelier myself, I would still have spent over $100.00 more if I bought the fixture from West Elm.

In the example from homebysunset.com, the capiz shell elements were immitated by using rice paper that was laminated at Kinko's.  I'm not sure if I am going to go that route, since I am a really big fan of natural elements, so I will be looking for my own alternate solution.