✥ Salvage A Melted/Damaged Lamp Shade ✥

I have this little wicker lamp leftover from my old office {job}. I used it briefly in my home office. But I put it too close to the desk shelf and the shade melted.

I was going to put the lamp up for sale for a few bucks- actually I did list it- but then realized I'm throwing away money.

Why not try to fix the shade and sell it for more? I still probably wouldn't keep it, as it never really "went" with what's happening in the rest of the house.

So- The BIG question- will recovering a lamp shade hide/fix the fact that it was damaged?
I chose to recover the shade with burlap for two reasons.
(1) I think it works with the wicker. (2) I wanted something sturdy that will hold its shape.
Recovering a lampshade is pretty easy. Just a few tricks to help you do it.
You want to cut out a piece of fabric large enough to not only cover the shade but also provide an inch of extra fabric on all sides.
I did this by simply rolling the shade along the fabric and tracing the outline with a marker.
Then go back over that line and make a second line one inch larger. This is the line you will actually cut.

The side you drew on will be the same side you will be attaching to the shade. I used some spray adhesive to attach the fabric to the shade. {I priced it out and paid 5 bucks at Walmart. It would've been a little cheaper if I had used a 40% off coupon and gotten it from JoAnn's.}

This is important you need to start attaching the new fabric to the old fabric seam. Then you will wrap the fabric around the shade, smoothing it as you go, until you end at the old seam. If you don't create your new seam over the old one you'll be able to see two seams when the light is on.
At the seam you should fold over the fabric to make a clean edge and use hot glue to secure it.
{If you're using a soft fabric, like silk, it's a good idea to fold over your fabric where the seam will be and iron it so it will look crisp.}

Next you'll wrap the excess fabric around the edges of the shade and use hot glue to attach it to the inside.
 Because my shade was warped I attached the fabric more securely to the tops and bottom and only firmly secured the fabric to the undamaged portions on the shade.


Once I finished, I staged the lamp and took some photos  for the sale listing. 
But when I saw the pics the lamp looked like something was missing. It was a little to plain. What do you think?

I decided some typography was in order. I turned to Microsoft Word and typed up something to give the lamp more interest and character. 

A "No. 301" to be exact.

I printed it up and planned to tape it to the inside of the shade, as I did with the French Bee Lamp I made last week. Because the fabric was so thick I could hardly see my stencil. I tried darkening the stencil with a black sharpie but it was still too difficult to see.

So I finally cut it out and taped it to the outside. I wanted the writing to be an even one inch from the bottom of the shade but a strait piece of paper wouldn't do that. So I made several cuts on the top and bottom of the stencil so that I could curve the paper slightly.



I used a thin brush and black craft paint to fill in the stencil. The stencil was a little flimsy- but I'm pretty good at improvising. If you aren't, just print out your stencil on card stock and you shouldn't have a problem.


So here it is.
The once ruined portion of the lampshade it right in the front and I think it now looks great!
There is no visible damage, at all!  The burlap is straight  and there is no waffling where the shade was once melted.

Maybe I should rethink selling this after all?

Thanks for checking out my project!

I party HERE-

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? 

DIY Crate & Barrel Mercury Glass Lamp

This lamp on the left was my dream lamp- the lamp on the right is my copy.
The inspiration comes from Crate & Barrel and I heart it big time. Too bad it's 239 buckaroos for ONE!
I searched high and lower for something even close to this gorgeous without success.
Then I was listening to Nate Berkus and heard hm say something about DIY mercury glass finish (this is pre-blog days). Umm, I had no idea this was possible- but there are several tutorials online like here and here .

So obviously I decided to make my own. I figured it would cost be $100 for two lamps. I planned to buy glass kitchen canisters (using two tall ones like these), lamp kits, a fancy pants drill bit and of course the mercury glass faux finish.

 

 But fate struck and I found these glass lamps at the thrift store.

I do not love the shape the same way I loved the square inspiration piece- but I thought it was worth a try, especially cause it's hecka cheap and will save me 50 big ones.

I really wish I would have looked a little bit closer at the metal portions of the lamp. Soooo rusty! Who would buy these? Picture my two thumbs pointing right at me, "this guy!"

Ugg.

The base of the lamp didn't just unscrew- the lamp had to be completely taken apart. If you run into this, it's pretty easy to figure out-but you want to start with these screws up at the top- the ones holding the wires to the lamp.

Just unscrew those and you should be able to start stripping all the pieces off. This is what I had when both lamps were completely deconstructed.

I sanded the heck out of all the rusty pieces and bought a special rusty metal primer. Honestly it was not my favorite- but at Walmart there weren't  a whole lot of options.

For the mercury glass look- you wanna buy Looking Glass spray paint. I found it at Robert's for $19 and at Michael's for $12. Not bad with the 40% coupon.

I used a tutorial myself- but here's the basics-

(1) Cover the outside of your piece of glass and tape it off

(2) Evenly spray water on the inside

(3) Do several light coats of spray paint
4)Depending on the amount of desired "chipping" either let it dry naturally- or wipe it while it's wet and a lot of finish will come off

(I let mine dry naturally as my inspiration doesn't look very "chippy".)

Now for the goods- THE TIPS. 

✴I used the spray paint outside and could not have been in more ventilated space and I thought I was gonna pass out. It is WAY WORSE that regular spray paint. Wear a mask!

✴I did at least five coats. I didn't wait over night to do them (who's patient enough for that?) but you should wait a few minutes between coats, or you WILL get drip marks. Mercury glass should not have those!

✴My FAVORITE Part: real mercury glass has gold, tan and even black show through when it wears.
I waited a day and then used gold craft paint on a sponge brush to paint over the mirror spray paint. The paint on the brush acted as a paint thinner and I was able to distress the finish exactly how I wanted.
I used it very lightly in some places, not at all in others, and then heavily in a few spots.Then finished up with a few dispersed spots of black.

 I have to say, I LOVE this touch! It made a huge difference!

I  have a pair of these lamps now...but need to work out the matching lamp shade thing! Remember this dirty, thirfted Restoration Hardware shade? I think that cleaning experiment worked pretty well.

Hope you guys liked this one-cause I sure did! Oh yeah, grand total came in at 30 for two lamps, paint and one shade- I figure I'll be done in another 15 or twenty dollars.

Cleaning Thirft Store Lampshades

Today's post is featuring adventures in decontaminating cleaning thrift store lampshades! I have been sitting on several lamps that need major makeovers- but the weather is REFUSING to COOPERATE! 

I haven't been able to spray paint a thing for a WEEK!

Since I plan to remake several lamps, for two of them I thought it would be interesting to buy thrift store lampshades and try to clean them. I found some fabric lampshades to go with the bases. One looks pretty cheap- like a Walmart shade or something, and the other is a Restoration Hardware find, yay!. They both have visible stains/dirt and I can recover them if need be- but wanted to explore cleaning methods first.

HOW TO

1.] To clean a lampshade you should start with vacuuming it or wiping it with a dry cloth. Since these shades were visibly dirty I skipped the first choice and started with the next safest for fabric.

2.] You can mix some water and dish washing detergent in a 1:4 ratio with an egg beater until foam forms.  FYI- If your shade is silk the Internet says only to use Dreft or Ivory Snow, not dish soap. Apply foam to the whole shade and wipe with a clean cloth. If you only wet part there may be some fabric discoloration. This method is perfect for delicate materials and for shades that have glued on trim which will not hold up to water.

This probably would have worked for a shade that is lightly soiled. Something that hasn't been dusted regularly (or ever like my home!) and maybe some of the dust has ingrained into the fabric. If that method doesn't work you want to go extreme!

3.] Fill the bathtub with water and some dish soap and DUNK the shade making sure it is fully submerged each time. Don't leave the shade in the water! Pull it out and use a cloth to work the soap into the shade, especially any stains! You can then hang it to dry on the shower rod.

I washed the Restoration Hardware shade first and my experience was that this shade held up to the water well. It could easily withstand the washing. I dunked it quite a few times and worked soapy water all over the fabric. It turned out looking pretty good.

The cheaper shade had a much lower water tolerance. I dunked it about the same amount of times and then tried to scrub it but it had pulled in too much water too quickly. I let it sit to dry out but it was too far gone and the form was ruined. I would suggest scrubbing the highly soiled areas and then dunking the shade only once or at most twice if it's of a poorer quality.

So, umm-you can see the results for yourself. Here's an updated image of the lampshade today- if you want to know how to recover a lampshade, check it out! Hope this helps you guys!

- Becca
  Linked up here.

✥ Z Gallerie Lamp Knock Off ✥

While thrifting the other day I came across the awesome brass lamp. 

It weighs like 5 pound and has the most GORGEOUS shape!!

I've been obsessed with getting it painted because I knew it would be A. Mazing!

I was a little nervous about the paste/concrete-ish grey stuff (underneath the plastic part of the lamp). It must've been broken at some time, but it seemed very sturdy and I was not letting this one get away.

By the way, I looked up the brand of the lamp- Artesanata made in Portugal. I couldn't find any info online but it doesn't feel cheap. Any info out there in Blogland? Hopefully I'm not painting a priceless antique!

source

 I used two coats of primer for metals and as really impressed with how well it adhered to the base. Then two more coats of spray paint- this time a can I found at Michaels' on sale for 59 cents!

Here's my inspiration-

A real beaut from Z Gallerie.

Their version $139.

My version $25.

Here it is in it's new home. Let me know what you guys think!

Update: Check out these fantastic blogs who liked my Lamp Redo!

Looking for places to link up your projects? Check out my Party page.

I'm also linked up here.