While wandering around the blogosphere the other day, someone was raving about PB Teen and what adorable things they had. So I headed right over to check it out, and spotted this awesome coconut shell lamp. I immediately thought, I could make that!
I cut a bunch of white straws into pieces of varying lengths, and then strung them together with a needle and white thread. I had decided I wanted each string to taper in size, so I made sure to start with the really small pieces. Then I took the inside ring from an embroidery hoop that I had left over from Project 2, to tie my strings to.
I was a little worried about the straws hitting the light bulb, but I also wanted to cover the bulb better, so I decided to take a smaller hoop and create a tube out of white tracing paper to go on the inside. Then I wrapped a thin piece of white paper around the outside of both hoops, to cover the wood. I created an X out of thin wooden dowels that I punched through the tracing paper, under the inside embroidery hoop. I then placed the larger hoop with the straws attached, on top of the protruding dowels. This way by attaching my light chord to the point where the two dowels cross, I can carry the weight of both hoops on those dowels and hang it all from one point.
I like how it turned out, but I think if I make another version I would make some changes. The straws at the top got pretty long, so I might keep the straws all shorter and closer to the same size next time. This would keep the whole light more intricate and detailed, because I think the stacks of long straw pieces got a bit chunky.
And I’d like to use larger hoops so I could make the light without the inner tracing paper liner, but with enough straws that you still could mainly obscure the light bulb. At least two layers of straws, possibly three would probably be needed. And with larger hoops and shorter straws there wouldn’t be any fear of the straws hitting the light bulb.
Have you ever tried recreating a project you saw for sale somewhere? What were your results? Let us all know in the comments!
Ciao, Allison
the 3 R's blog 
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no clue why no one has commented on this. I love you you are very creative I can not wait to try this. I am going to do it on a larger scale but same concept. Thank you for sharing this.