Illuminating Before & After

This craft was made possible by my lovely friend, Katie.  We’ve known each other for almost 7 years now, and we’ve been talking about this lamp of hers for quite sometime.  Katie’s great aunt recently gave her a ton of antique furniture.  Some pieces are truly beautiful in the way that only antique pieces can be.  Some pieces, on the other hand, are in desperate need of some TLC, like this lovely lamp. 

As you can see, we forgot to take a “before” picture with the lamp in it’s original location.  And we also forgot to take a picture before we removed the top, which was really complicated.  So, you get the idea.  Here is the before.

As you have probably noticed, this lamp is a beast.  The base is huge, the shade is huge, the colors are intense and bold and not necessarily in a good way. 

We decided to paint the base.  We considered using painters tape for a two-toned effect, but after we found a very bold pattern for the shade, we decided the base should be a simple and black.  We used a regular black spray paint. 

Above, Katie displays how sad it is when you run out of a material mid-craft.  Luckily, we have men in our life who are more than happy to make Home Depot runs for us. 

While the boys were out buying another can of spray paint, we started on the shade.  We found this fabric at Hobby Lobby and it was honestly the perfect fabric for a novice lamp redo.  The linear pattern made it really simple for us to cut and measure straight lines, and make sure that our pattern was level around the shade.  Additionally, it helps that the lamp shade is completely cylindrical.  The fabric fit nice and snug and it was really a no fuss process. 

The finished lamp shade!! First, we measured the fabric to fit the shade, cut our fabric out, and used binder clips to hold the fabric in place while we used a hot glue gun to fix the material onto the shade (I am no expert here, I’m not sure if hot gluing is the most appropriate fix here, but it seems to have worked just fine!)

We finished spray painting the base, and let it dry.  The lamp found a temporary home in their basement for the Christmas holiday, because the lamp sits right where their Christmas tree went in their front room. 

Now the lamp is at home in their front room.  Later, we might tackle that blue chair (it could use a nice new print, to fit their front room’s white, black and red color scheme).  Unfortunately, I have no experience whatsoever in re-upholstering, but I’m open to learn.  If anyone knows of any great resources, please let me know! 
                                

                                     Before            &             After

And that’s all.  I love turning something old and blah into something new and lovely. 

Some places where we find inspiration.