I love acquiring things cheaply.
After we moved out of our college apartment, I bought a lamp at a garage sale for $5. It was a pretty sturdy looking thing, the only problem with it was the lampshade was a little icky. There was a stain on it and part of it was a little cracked and bent.
No big deal, I thought, I’m sure I can craft my way out of this one.
Welllll several months later (when I found the time), I accomplished my crafting. I felt like I had a pretty brilliant idea: I decided to Mod Podge the bejeezus out of that thing and I was going to make my self look smart and classy while doing it. (The Mod Podge would actually help reinforce the cracked shade too. So handy!)
I once bought a book of Byron poems from Half-Price Books because I wanted to read his Don Juan poem. No, I didn’t end up finish reading it and of course I didn’t read anything else in the damn book. This lamp project turned out to be the perfect way for me to revive poetry in my life. Now, whenever someone asks me about the lamp, I talk about Byron like I was a goddamned English major. Pft.
Okay, here’s how I did the lamp:
All I needed was:
- 1 ugly lampshade
- 1 old book
- 1 sponge brush
- 1 thing of Mod Podge
- I began by tearing blocks of text from the book (I had to use several small blocks instead large chunks of text because of the way the poem was printed). I decided to tear straight edges instead of using scissors so that it gave it more of an aged/organic look
- Once I had enough pieces to cover the lamp shade, I began applying Mod Podge to the lampshade and pasting the ripped up pages onto the shade starting from the top, sprialing down to the bottom
- After I pasted each piece I applied Mod Podge on top of the text to securely adhere all of the paper and give the shade a nice shiny hardened look
- Finally, I let it dry, and looked for any spots that might need a little more Mod Podge.
It’s that easy! It looks way more interesting now and looks pretty good in my bedroom. Next time I do a project like this, I’ll be more careful about the way I overlap the pieces in consideration for the way it looks when it’s on, but it provides the light I need and isn’t on for very long, so it’s a big craft success for me.
What old things do you have in your house that could use a little revamping?
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