Done?

(I'll apologize now for the extremely poor lighting in the photos you are about to see.  I can't seem to get the hang of the white balance settings.)

I know, I know.  We should quit while we're ahead, right?  But ironing these little bits of wax paper, punching the circles, stringing them all together and layering them on the wire rings (a la this tutorial) has become a bit of an obsession for the two of us now.  So are we done with it yet?  You be the judge:

From the door, it actually looks like capiz.  Mom was fooled when she first saw it.  I knew we had done a good job from the way she talked about it.  Craig and I gave each other a mental high five when we saw the look on her face.  Here it is with the light on:

We're really happy with the way it turned out!  We figure we have about 1,500 wax paper circles in total.  (We had initially thought we'd only need 300...talk about a major underestimation!)  After hanging up the last strand, Craig uttered the words that made me fall in love with him all over again:

"I think we need more."

Does this guy know me or what?!  The look was exactly what we wanted, but we were thinking the same thing.  More would definitely be better in this case.  In case you're wondering why we think we need more circles, here's a closer view:

 

You can see a couple of gaps between the strands in these pictures.  And depending on where you are sitting/standing, you can see the light bulbs and/or the old gold fixture peeking through.

So the answer to the title of this post is (fortunately or unfortunately) no.  Maybe we're nuts, but we're prepared to spend another few hours finishing this thing up.  In any case, we both love the look of our new light and Craig loves the price tag even more!  Here's what we ended up spending on our chandelier makeover:

• wax paper: $3 a roll (we used two rolls)
• parchment paper: free (it was a sample from a tradeshow)
• circle cutter: $16 (this didn't work as well as we hoped, so we ended up getting the next item)
• circle punch: $16 (sale price)
• wire wreath form: $5
• extra thread: $5
• CFL bulbs: $9 each (we bought three new bulbs)

Grand Total = $54

It seems like a lot, but if you think about it, the most expensive parts were the cutter (which we'll probably end up selling in our garage sale this summer because the punch was a lot easier to use) and the CFL bulbs (which we felt were necessary because of their close proximity to the paper circles).  A modest investment for a light fixture we can finally both agree on!  (Trust me, we've looked at a lot.)

And it was definitely worth the money to not have it look like this ever again:

Thanks to my sweetie pie sister for convincing us to try this DIY project out instead of replacing the whole thing!