Create a fireplace tool holder caddy

A versatile serving piece is born from a fireplace tool holder and cast off ceiling lamp glass parts, suitable for holding silverware, flowers or candles. U-shaped fireplace holders, or those shaped like a wheel spoke, are easy to design with and easy to find. Make sure your ceiling glass shades have a lipped rim; you can choose a variety of shapes or use one shape for all. They should be different sizes, but nothing too gigantic or they will not nestle as well with one another.
 
Materials:

• Fireplace tool holder
• 3 or 5 glass ceiling lampshades or domes
• 20 gauge wire—10 yards
• Chandelier crystals or beads for embellishing—9 to 15 crystals (3 per lamp piece) optional

Tools:

• Wire cutters
• Round nose pliers

How to make it

1. Remove any sooty residue from the tool holder. The holder can be painted, but I prefer the natural metal finish.

2. Each lamp will hang at a different height from the holder. As a rule, the bigger glass pieces work better at the lower heights. Since you can’t hold all five pieces in the air at once to do a dry run, use your imagination a bit and just get started. Wire is cheap, so it’s easy to change your mind after you get going.

3. Start with the piece that will hang the lowest. Measure enough wire to go around the neck of the lamp piece plus 6” for closing it with a decorative end, plus the length you want it to hang plus another 6” to finish it closed at the top—about 36”. When in doubt, add more wire to your length than less. Cut two pieces this length.

4. Circle the top of the glass lamp with your wire, overlapping the ends with one end being 6” long and the other end being what is left. Twist the wire together as snug to the lamp piece as possible three times. With a pair of round nose pliers, make little loops starting at the end of the 6” piece, one after another to form a decorative design. With your remaining long length, you can form three little loops spaced out along the length of your wire.

5. Repeat this procedure with the other piece of wire on the same glass lamp piece, with your overlapping closure being directly opposite from the first one.

6. Holding the two loose wires closed together with your hand, place it on the tool holder to make sure it will hang where you wanted it to. Adjust the length as needed before you twist the wires closed. The wire tails can be 6” long or so. Trim the extra wire length off. Repeat the decorative loop finish with the ends as you did at the neck closure.

7. For each remaining glass lamp, repeat the wire hanging instructions, while staggering the lengths of the wire so each glass lamp is at a different height.

8. Feel free to add crystal chandelier drops or beads to the wire loops for more pizzazz.
glass. Serve the remaining amaretti biscuits alongside the syllabub.

 

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Excerpted from The Salvage Studio, October 2008, Skipstone.

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