Carrying on from the last post–another cool find from a local auction house was an old crystal chandelier. Once I got it home, I promptly disassembled it and sorted all the crystals by shape and size.
Why would I do this? Because crystals are EXPENSIVE. A simple crystal pendant like this one retails for ten to fifteen dollars. A pack of of two dozen new basic “craft” crystals will run you about the same. So for $120, I picked up about 1000 crystals. Can we say “deal?”
So once the crystals were sorted, I got to work. I had picked up a couple of garden “obelisks” from Gardeners.com, and with the help of some craft wire (TigerTail if you want to be exact), I dolled the obelisks up. Then the results were put outside: the larger one sits by the front door, while the smaller one is outside the sliding glass doors nearest my office. They have held up surprisingly well, surviving the winter winds and rains and, except for the occasional spider web, staying pretty clean.
After tarting up the obelisks I still had a huge cache of crystals left over, so I decided to add a little sparkle inside the house as well. This time I revamped yet another Gardeners.com purchase, only this was something I had purchased long ago. After painting the great room, I had installed a circular arbor on the north wall in the lower area. For years we attempted to keep air plants on it, but the air plants had the annoying habit of falling out of their circles onto the floor behind the couch.
So I moved the air plants to other receptacles and once again got busy with my TigerTail. The results are quite pleasing, as the sparkle of the crystals is lovely even from across the room, especially during sunsets.
