Tag: shade

Craft Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts

Clearance Jug Lamps

Jessica Smith

I hope you all had a merry Christmas and a wonderful New Years! I’ve been off work for three whole weeks and it has been amazing! You might think I would update my blog more since I had a lot of time off, but I’ve been happily hanging out with my family and friends instead of doing work of any kind! That’s not to say I didn’t craft on my three-week staycation. Stay tuned for a bunch of new projects that I’ve been working on!

Today’s project couldn’t be easier to make. And yes, if you read the title of the post, it is a lamp!

An easy lamp? Yup!

I was browsing around at Michaels a couple of months ago and I found two beautiful green glass jugs on clearance for around $3 a piece. I knew right then and there that I wanted to turn them into a set of lamps for our night stands. You see, ever since B and I have lived together (oh, 4+ years), he’s had a lamp and I haven’t. Or at least that’s how I remember it. I definitely have had one since we moved to our house.

I’ve wanted to buy a matching set but they are SO EXPENSIVE. So when I saw these jugs I knew I already had the perfect tools to turn them into lamps.

Even longer ago — sheesh, probably two years ago — I bought a kit on Amazon to turn a wine bottle into a lamp. After I bought the kit I decided that a wine bottle makes for an awkward lamp, but I saved the kit for later. Perfectly enough, the clearance jugs had an opening and a neck as skinny as a wine bottle! So making my lamp was as easy as plugging the kit into the opening of the bottle. I thought I might have to seal it with glue, but the cork is in the neck of the jug very tightly.

 

 

Cork Adapter

You can see the cork in the neck of the bottle in the above photo. For a better photo, or to buy your own, check out this listing on Amazon. I definitely don’t think I paid $20 for a set of two. I think I paid closer to $10…. so maybe shop around?

Anyway, I made two lamps in two minutes. The hard part? Finding shades! See, the jugs aren’t huge, so a normal shade would be too big. And then I found one at Target I loved, but they only had one. I held onto the one for about a month before giving up on finding its mate. I returned my favorite shade, then found a set of two a couple of weeks later. SCORE!

Here’s how the lamps turned out:

Jug Lamp

The only downside to the kit is that the cord runs out at the fixture instead of through the lamp, but I love them regardless.

Jug Lamp On

 

And now I finally have a lamp to go in my nightstand. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to me, amiright?

Hope you are all doing well in 2014! It’s back to work tomorrow and back to more diligent blogging. Getting back into the groove will be rough, but normal will be a nice change.

 

Craft Projects

Painted Chevron Lampshade

Jessica Smith

Chevron Lampshade

I’ve been holding onto this oddly shaped lampshade for a few years now and I finally got around to sprucing it up. I wanted to bring some color to the shade, so I got out two different types of paint and set to work.

Chevron Lampshade 3

First, I painted the entire shade cloud blue, from Martha Stewart Craft paints. I let the shade dry before adding two, thick chevron stripes in Martha Stewart’s gold metallic paint. I hand-painted the stripes because the painters’ tape wouldn’t stick to the shade — they turned out great, though!

I finished the shade by trimming the edges in gold paint as well.

Chevron Lampshade 4

In about an hour, my shade went from boring white, to minty and gold. I put it onto a stainless steel lamp base and put it in our family room.

Chevron Lampshade 1

I need to get a side table for this room because the itty bitty ottoman looks silly, but the lamp looks darn cute.

Chevron Lampshade 2

Quick and Easy Crafts

Marble Lamp

Jessica Smith

Mason Jar 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.

IMG_2422

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

IMG_2455

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!