Eventually the India pied-a-terre will be a place full of patterns. And color, though you might not yet believe it from all the white walls. For now, the very first step toward a pattern-full place was the “Arabian Nights Lights” I made for the entry area. They’re ceiling pendants with exaggerated two-foot long shades:
I was finally able to install them and shoot quick pictures during the last few hours before we had to catch a flight back to the U.S., and this chair is one of only a few pieces of furniture in the apartment right now, so minimal styling!
The full tutorial showing how to make these stenciled pendant shades is posted over at PaintandPattern.com
The stencils are from the Royal Design Studio Mini Craft Stencils line, which takes some of their popular big stencils and scales them down in size for smaller projects like these pendant shades. Then I painted with a simple combo of black, brown and metallic copper paints.
The copper hardware is from World Market. I’m loving copper lately, and copper is all over our apartment in India, so I was happy to find this ceiling pendant hardware in copper! And at a reasonable price too.
I get into the little details, and one detail I loved about these pendant shades was the little copper screw on the bottom. I had to order it from a tattoo machinery supply shop!
Well, among the seven big suitcases of stuff we hauled to India for the apartment, you can guess it, the little copper screws got lost. After all the Googling and the expense (they were not cheap including shipping cost), I wound up getting brass replacement screws from a hardware store in our India neighborhood for only pennies each. So I put copper paint on the parts that show and called it done.
Also somewhere on one of the shades is a paw print. You can see Chaai the Crafty Cat got involved in this project too. One night while the fabric shade pieces were laying on the floor, Chaai plopped onto the fabric and started cleaning himself after eating dinner. Of course I shoo’d him off and in the process, he stuck a wet paw on the fabric. So a little reminder of him is on the other side of the planet now!
If you’re interested in making a ceiling pendant like this, check out the step-by-step and supplies for stenciling and assembling a shade at Paint and Pattern.
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Wow! your stenciled pendant are awesome. I like the design of your house in the first picture, it’s so minimalistic and clean.
Thanks a lot for the tutorial, I would be really interested in trying to make the stenciled pendants as you showed above.
I’m glad you’d like to try making them. It’s a great way to make unique pendant shades. Let me know if you try it! Deb
Hi Deb,
I will let you know how it goes with the pendant shades. I’ve been browsing around your blog, it’s terrific! Rarely I have seen so much love for decoration. I will make sure to share your blog with as many people as possible :)