As promised, today I'm sharing with you just how I made our dining room lighting. Maybe you've wondered how I bought those brass parts for so cheap? Or maybe you noticed the word brass in quotations and had a sneaking suspicion that they are not brass parts…….if that was your guess then you are correct. As much as I would love it to be real brass, we all know that if it was, the lighting would cost way over ten dollars. So here is my secret ingredient…..STRAWS. Yes, the lighting is actually made of straws. I was pleased that at two different points, friends who came to the house and saw the lighting in the works assumed it was made of brass. I was secretly worried that it would look like straws, but I think I can safely say that I pulled it off.

So really, there are only 4 items you need for this DIY: 

-straws (without the bendable portion).  I used black and there are bits of black that come through where I missed with the spray paint, and I felt like it helped with the overall "brass metal" look as opposed to being perfectly gold.

-gold spray paint

-string and needle

-a pendant light kit (I used this one, it got horrible reviews but it worked for me.)

*I already had the straws, gold spray paint, and string on hand….then with a coupon the light kit was only $10….win, win.

First, you want to pull the string through three straws in a row.  Then cut the string and create a triangle.

From there, I simply added triangles to create the shape I wanted….usually this was two straws at a time.

After hanging the black pendant light fixture, I hung up the brass sculpture part around it using wire at the top.  I found that I was better able to see where more triangles were needed when it was hanging.  I was also able to see where I wanted to connect the triangles when it was hanging.  

Lastly, trim any string from the knots that you made, and then go back and paint over any exposed knots with gold paint and a paint brush.