By Monica Ewing, Sunset senior designer

After punching and arranging the circles for my funky lampshade project, the next steps were to string and hang them...

Step 5 Stringing the circles
Umm, I experienced a few false starts here. First, I tried fishing wire and dabs of hot glue. Too time-consuming. Who wants to see globs of hot glue anyway? Then I adhered two circles together along the fishing wire with Glue Dots. The light didn’t penetrate two layers as well as one. Next I tried sewing them together by hand. A bit time-consuming as well, but it looked good. Ultimately, I bought clear nylon thread at Jo-Ann’s and sewed them together by machine. It took me about three minutes to sew each strand. I made 30 strands, which makes a total of an hour and a half to sew them all.

Tip #4 Backstitch the first and last circles. Just a few stitches will lock the thread in place.
Tip #5 Use your machine’s longest stitch length for fewer holes and faster speed.
Tip #6 Feed each circle through with one hand and gently pull the strand through with the other. This will keep the circles from bunching too closely together.

Step 5 Hanging the circles
Tying each strand onto the wire by hand was tedious. So, I made each strand twice as long, folded it in half, and draped it over the wire. This was by far the easiest part of the project. Then I spaced each strand out evenly.

Tip #7 To get the circles to lie flat, bring every other strand to the outside. (I realized this after I took the picture.)

Step 6 Light it up
I used an 11-watt florescent bulb for two reasons: It’s eco-friendly, and it generates less heat than a standard incandescent bulb. I didn’t want to risk melted plastic. Finally, I pulled the chain and watched it glow.

Next week: Letter-holder makeover.