Go Toward The Light...

Turning something kind of tacky into something lovely to look at can be done in all sorts of interesting ways.  Take these lamps.  I found them a few years ago at a consignment store and I fell in love with the glass base.  The cut of the glass and the night light inside made me want to leave them on all the time.  But the ugly, dirty nylon shade left a lot to be desired.

I have no idea where this idea came from, but I really wanted to create something that used the light of the lamp as part of the decor.  Somewhere in the cortex under my hair the idea of a "slide" popped up.  How or what that would result in took a day of idea shopping and thinking.  More on this later...


After bringing in one of the usual suspects, thrift store fabric, I splurged a little bit on this project and spent about $15 on two different coordinating fabrics that match my bedding.  I didn't use this fabric on the lamp but it did help me create that unique light effect.  I also picked up some trim and some ribbon for an additional 8 bucks or so.

The first step was to grab a pair of scissor and remove the cheap nylon strips from the frame of the lamp shade.  Eye sore gone, yeah!  I ripped my cheap cotton fabric in strips and frayed the edges.  Yes, I do like to do this a lot.  It's because I am too lazy to sew things.  I stitched the strips together by hand with the seams facing out and frayed those edges as well.  After wrapping the fabric all around the shade frame I stitched the end onto the rest, again by hand, and frayed the edge.

Here is a tip.  Be sure to count the number of wraps between each support bar on the top so that the strips of fabric are evenly spaced all around. Count the number of times you wrap the fabric around the first frame and duplicate that count around the second. 

Now for the light effect.  I scanned the fabric I bought into my computer and created images of the moth's, butterflies and bees on the fabric and printed 6 color images on a piece of paper.  Since I live close to everything (one of the better features about living in this neighborhood) I made a quick jaunt over to Kinkos and printed 1 copy on transparency film.  Another jaunt over to Mystic Paper and I cut 12 small frames out of Idea-ology Grunge Board.  I made six slides gluing the transparencies between the grunge board with the top piece wrapped in the coordinating fabric.   With a grommet punched into either end of the slide I ran ribbon through and tied 3 slides around each shade.  When the light is on it creates a pretty soft picture on the shade.

Finally, I stitched a coordinating trim to the bottom of each shade and topped them off with a cheap $3 antique finish finial from Home Depot.

 

Originally my plan was to refinish the brass base as well.  I'm so happy with how pretty these turned out I've decided that it gives it a little bit of pizzaz and have left it alone.   It's very romantic.  Oooo, la la.

Mucho, mucho better.  Most of the time I do leave these lamps on now.  I just love walking into the soft light warming my bedroom.