Marble Lamp

Remember those marbles I talked about yesterday? The one catch to me making John a marble tray was that I not use all of the marbles in case he ever wanted to play with them again. My solution to this was to make him a lamp out of a mason jar to display his marbles in a way that he could still get access to them if he wanted to.

This was really simple — Amazon sells kits for turning mason jars into lamps. So, I popped the top off of the jar, filled it with marbles, screwed on the kit and a put a light bulb in the lamp. Easy as pie.

The tricky part? Finding a darn lampshade that didn’t look ridiculous on the lamp. I think I tried five of them. I tried a shade from le Target — way too big. I tried three different shades from Home Depot… way too small. The one in the photo used to be pink with flowers. Not too manly. Then I spray painted it ivory. That didn’t look so hot either. As a final attempt to use this shade, which was the best size and shape of any of the ones I tried, I painted it grayish blue and accented with silver paint.

Phew, this was way trickier of a project than I ever intended because of that darn shade.

It was all worth it because he really liked the lamp. It looks great in their antique room, too.

Have you ever turned something into a lamp? Next time I want to try it without using a pre-fab kit. What would you ill your mason jar with? I think shells would be neat, but our house isn’t too beachy. Still would be pretty though!