French {The Bee} Lamp

The other day I went to Savers Thrift Store to look for lamps and lampshades. Luckily, I found both-

The lampshades I found were a little soiled. But they were super cheap so I thought a lampshade cleaning experiment was in order. I got to use one on these sa-weet

Crate & Barrel Mercury Glass Lamps.

While I was there I found

this brand new lamp. It's nothing special, something you may have seen a million times. At first I wasn't sure what to do with it and was about to pass it by, but the shape of the lampshade pulled me back to it. I figured there had to be possibilities with a near barrel shaped lampshade and figured I could come up with something!

MATERIALS

Unsure of what to do with it, I primed it white with Rustoleum's Clean Metal Primer.  Then, well, then it sat in my pile of to do projects. Does this ever happen to you? You purchase something and then let it sit because you have no idea what to do next. Well it collected dust for ages, until I finally found some inspiration online by browsing "painted lamps."

Isn't "Google Image" the bomb? I seriously do not know what I would do without that search engine. 

Any-who, back to the lamp. I now had an idea and I painted it black. Then it got a few layers of clear coat. 

While that was drying, I put the shade on another base (the mercury glass one I did a few weeks back.) The next step was to turn to Microsoft Word. I copied the image I wanted and played around with the text until I had something I liked.

Once I had the template I wanted to use I printed it off and taped it to the inside of the lampshade.With the light on- it was really easy to see it, but if yours isn't you could trace it with a  black sharpie and then tape it to the inside.

I used Krylon Short Cuts Paint Pen to trace, then fill, in the image. Here you can see where I started, with just the "L" done.



Here's the close-up of the finished shade. I was pretty easy- the brush is super thin and worked like a charm. I wasn't too concerned about about perfection- I wanted it to look sort of worm.

I put this lamp in the spare bedroom/office. But the way things go around here, it could be moved anywhere in the upcoming weeks. Doesn't it feel like this is the way the lamp was supposed to look from the beginning? Hope you liked yet another lamp makeover.

Thanks for stopping in! What have you remade lately? Lighting? Your whole house?