DIY: Bird's Nest

Do It Yourself - this is a motto of a growing number of people who want to decorate their apartment in fashionable and designer way. Normally you do not need great skills to make something beautiful out of nothing. This is the case of cheap and spectacular lamps made of ... string.

The lamp made of string will be a great addition to any room. If the string is clewed tightly – it can give us soft and atmospheric lighting. If we want stronger light - just clew it a little loosely. This lamp is ideal for minimalist interiors. It will be great inside the Scandinavian interior, loft or childs room.

The string lamp can be made quickly and easily. How? Here you have a proven recipe. We need: a minimum of 28 meters of cotton or jute string (if you want to get a soft light - we need 2-3 times more), a bit of cooking oil, cable ties in the colour of the string, beach ball 60cm, soffit, bulb holder, 2 meters of isolated cable, 1 meter of a thick wire, wikol glue, paint in spray, aluminum flat bar about 1 -2cm longer than the hole in the lamp, drill and large, of course, energy-efficient light bulb.

We pump the beachball and we oil it (so it can be later removed from the lamp), we have to unwind the string and put it in a bowl of wikol glue. We can hang the ball on a stick such as a broom, or simply put it on the foil or cardboard on the floor. Before clewing, we need to draw a circle on the ball with a diameter of 1 cm larger than the diameter of the bulb. This will be the only place, where there will be no string.

We clew the string seemingly untidy, while making sure that it is put evenly on the ball. Wikol has the advantage that stiffens the string and when it is dry, it gets completely transparent. We must remember not to put too much glue on the string. In such a situation, in the spaces between the string there can be a transparent glue residue which doesnt look aestheticly. Our future lamp should dry for about a day (24 hours).

After the glue has dried we can release the air from the ball and gently remove it from the inside of our "Birds Nests". Now its time to make a hanger. We use hard wire to make a circle with a diameter slightly larger than our hole in the lamp. It is enough to roll it three times. Then we put it gently inside the lamp and attach it using the cable ties in the hole. We drill a hole in the middle of the aluminium flat bar that fits the cable.

We paint the string and the lamp with paint spray. If we had a black string– we paint it black. If we had white string – we paint white or any colour in which you want to have the lamp. The paint in a spray additionally will stiffen the structure of the lamp and it will cover the remains of the glue. We screw soffit and the cable together, we put aluminium flat bar on the bottom of the cable, then we put the controller of the cable and the bulb holder. If the cable is too long we wrap it and secure with a cable tie.

This , hand- made lamp Birds Nest, will not only be a beautiful addition to any room , but also real proud of its creator.