Let There Be DIY Light

Every day our colorful family room is looking more finished! I'm happy to have found some great vintage school chairs on ebay with the perfect teal colored paint. We all love them. School chairs are a safe bet, I think. Lamp shopping, on the other hand, is tricky for me because there's often one element of a lamp that doesn't interest me, and actually the lamps I tend to be most drawn to are really expensive. So I've taken to doing some lamp DIY. I've been having fun customizing lampshades for a few rooms and now have the bug to customize some actual lamps as well after completing one. Inspired by my friend Paula who turns interesting and unusual industrial things into lamps, like pulleys, pipes and all manner of other odd bits, I decided to give it a go myself.

I found this metal piece at the flea market a while back and loved it and thought I'd simply use it as a vase. It's quite heavy and made of something concrete-like material. I took it to my local electrician and he wired it up as a lamp for me. In the US you can buy lamp kits and do this easily yourself but here I haven't found any such kits, though I imagine it wouldn't be hard to pick out individual parts for a lamp. I did need a hole drilled so I'm glad the electrician did that for me. I covered it with a vintage tea towel that I also bought at the flea market. I traced out a simple pattern by rolling the shade on pattern paper and then I glued it to the lampshade around the rims with textile glue. Super easy and can be done in about 15 minutes. I still need to add a bit of trim to the inside to cover the raw edges better, but it's looking nice to this point. This is now my favorite lamp, and I have my eye out for more unusual things I can turn into lamps with pretty customized shades. Here's to some fun DIY!