craftgrrl | questions and plans (warning long!) edited to add some stuff (Reply)

So my husband and i are posted this summer. As yet we don't know where we are going, and i am nervous, excited and sad at the thought. We'll be leaving our first home behind, we got married here, had our first pet here, brought our only child home from the hospital to this house, dealt with sickness and death here, and really became a family here.

so in order to get me excited about the move, my hubby suggested i think of a new theme for our room. he was thinking color wise, i was thinking ohh theme... So as a big Phan, our room is going to be decorated in a Phantom of The opera theme.

I have a Phantom painting, 4 collectors ornaments, a piano book (with keyboard) a special book from the last season the Phantom ran in the Pantages Theatre in Toronto.

I want to make a few things: The mask (using my husbands face and plaster of paris), a phantom Teddy bear, a quilt, some throw pillows, and the one thats going to be hardest and most fun - a broken candle chandeleir of doom and exposition.

I'm going to give new life to some of our furniture and stuff too. The bedside table, dressers, bookcases and mirror are all going to get a couple coats of paint (black) and be embellished with phantomy things (Mask drawer pulls, tiny masks, tiny fake roses, music notes etc)

the theme images i'm gonna use are the mask, roses, and sheet music. Fabrics are satins and velvets, with the usual cottons and linens thrown in.

the quilt is going to be pretty plain, black, white and raspberry squares done in satin. with matching white satin pillow cases(probably embroidered with 'The Phantom of the Opera")and matching throw pillows in black and raspberry with roses and mask embelleshments

The teddy is going to get a fabric mask (unless i can figure out a way to do a plaster one) a cape and some roses.

the chandelier is my big fun thing. I want it to be usable, but still looking broken. It'll have 5 candle holders (only 4 will be usable)beads and crystals in two teirs.

my plan is to take two metal rings in two different sizes, about 1.5ft diamter for the first, and 2.5 diamter for the second, hold them together with chain, and suspend them with chain.

in the center of the first ring will be a chandle holder, suspended with chains so that it sits between the two rings. The lower ring will have four more candle holders, all of which will have dangling crystals on the bottom.

criscrossing from the top ring to the bottom ring and back again will be strings of beads, clear, silver, light blue etc. on thin wire. it'll have a few obvious gaps and some places that are bent or twisted.

i want the bottom ring to hang crooked, so i'm going to use a longer lenght of chain to hold one point of it, which should create a slant. the chandle holders will all have equal lenghts of chain so they'll dangle below the ring at the same height, and should hang straight, emphasizing the slant.

the chains, and rings will be wrapped with clear string thats been strung with tiny beads here and there for extra sparkle.

this is my plan so far

-the small circles are candle holders
-the blue dots are cyrstals
-the black lines are chains and the rings
-the aqua lines are the beaded wire between the two teirs

i'm planning to solder it together so chains don't slip and move etc.

i think the hardest part of this whole project is going to be finding and getting the materials for it.

i'm not sure what'll i can use for the rings, but i need something thats silver, or can be painted silver. i know that there are ways of hardening chain so that it holds a specific shape, and i wouldn't mind doing that if i could find out how its done. anyone got any suggestions for the rings?

and i need some places where i can order chains, beads, crystal pendant thingies in bulk for a decent price. I'm going to check ebay, but i was hoping someone might be able to point me in a nice direction. cause its one thing to find something on ebay, but i don't want to have to worry about someone outbidding me.

eta: the chain i am thinking of/looking for is not big chucky everyday chain. i want chain thats about 2-3 cm wide, something you could use to make jewellery with. none of the hardware stores in my town have chain in that side.

i have until august to work on it, cause we'll be moving around the 3rd or 4th week. and i'd like to have everything finished and ready to be hung/placed/used when we move into our new place

sorry for the horribly long post with only one picture. but any ideas/input are appreciated.