I have always been fascinated with handmade lighting, especially if it involves paper. You may recall the
blue paper flower with LED lights I made a while ago, or the various
vellum paper lanterns I made for myself and
for my friend Belinda.
Anyway, this lighting project is a bit different. I still used LED string lights to light it all up, but instead of card stock paper, vellum or tissue papers, I used coffee filter paper.
Coffee filters are cheap, wonderfully fluffy, pliable, half-opaque, half-translucent and best of all, light.
They do not weigh the finished piece down. For an amateur handy-person like myself, and I cannot stress the word "amateur" enough, hanging this paper/light sculpture on the wall was easy breezy. I hammered a couple of nails and hanged the piece using a bit of wire. Much easier (and lighter) than hanging massive pictures, or posters.
TUTORIAL
Here are the steps for making it.
Materials:
- LED string lights (mine are from IKEA)
- Coffee filters (about 200)
- 1 art canvas 14"x14"
- Some string or sewing thread
- Glue gun, and
- Wire.
Directions:
- Arrange the lights on the canvas and sew them in place.
- Fold a coffee filter like in the pictures and glue it on the canvas, careful not to touch the lights. Do this with 150-200 coffee filters and see if you need any more to cover the holes (if any).
- Add wire at the back of the canvas and hang on the wall.
Here are some more pictures of the finished piece, currently hanging on our dining room wall.