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Hello! I'm Suzannah, a home design lover and mom of two, with one more on the way in January 2027. Follow along with my DIY fixer upper house renovations, design tips, occasional sewing and crafty projects, and de-stressing goals.

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Showing posts with label lamp. Show all posts

3.04.2013

Easy-as-it-sounds project from the weekend

Short and sweet project recap today!

Oh, and also--I so appreciate the thoughts you left on Friday's post about my current home decor questions and style indecision... and about houseplants!! Half success, half not so much on those fronts... I haven't had any epiphanies about some of my decorating dilemmas, but I do have a much better sense of where to put which plants and how often to water them--after some advice from a sweet and helpful friend, who also gave me some little plants starts to pot and grow.

But, I also have a fun project to share, a quickie I did the other day while watching SNL reruns with the husband. The most chill kind of crafty project I can think of. ;) While the lampshade recovering project is a pretty common one around the inspiration-internet, I've actually never done it myself. But I picked out this cool charcoal cobblestone-ey print from Fat Quarter Shop and was inspired by the dark and black lampshades I've been pinning lately... it also reminded me of an animal print, like snakeskin I guess, without actually being animal print. Because I try to limit myself on that, so I don't find myself wearing leopard print flats and tortoiseshell watch like I did that one time...

Anyway, I had this boring white lampshade that I'd picked up at Goodwill a while ago--lampshades are so expensive, so even though I didn't have an immediate use for it, I bought it. So FQS sent me the nice cobblestone print, and I just recovered it! Which was almost as easy as I was expecting it would be. I definitely Googled "how to recover a lampshade" just in case.

I used the existing lampshade as a pattern and rolled it on the fabric to get the right shape, then cut it out with an inch or so on all sides just in case. I gave the fabric a light allover coat of spray adhesive, then smoothed it back on. Then turned the edge under and sealed it with hot glue. Sooo easy!



I put it on this copper lamp I also picked up on a whim at Goodwill. I'm not sure it's the best combination, but it works for now in the basement bonus room. The grey is nearly perfect with the other greys we have down there, but it's nice to add some texture with the pattern as opposed to some of the masculine lines that have ended up there with the TV, entertainment unit, bookshelves... here it is for now.

Always nice to have a win over the weekend! Verdict: lampshade-recovering: easy. But how many recovered lampshades could I ever want?? I'm set with one for now.

9 comments

11.15.2012

Spray paint Ikea hack--partial success at a lamp makeover

Simple house project to share today. This one's a partial success... let me explain. Our living room was looking a little boring, empty, under-furnished, even by my somewhat minimalist standards... and my interior decorator friend Adi suggested a big, cool floor lamp in the corner. Yes!! Something to fill the space and serve a good purpose.

I love tripod lamps but we already have one, and it's not super huge and imposing, so something even bigger... one of those cool modern arc lamps would be perfect, we thought! So here's the space...

And here's some inspiration...
Source: cb2.com via Suzannah on Pinterest



Source: apartmenttherapy.com via Suzannah on Pinterest

Pretty, pretty! I particularly like the white shades. So, I looked around and found these arc lamp choices...

The Enzo lamp from Z Gallerie

The Target version


And, the Ikea Regolit--which is HUGE compared to the other two, btw... not the same scale.

So, okay, some choices, reasonable prices, all that. But, I also checked Craigslist and found someone selling an Ikea Regolit for $20, and I picked it up on my lunch break one day rather than drive all the way out to Ikea! I was sort of desperate for decor pieces, too... I get that way sometimes. Just gotta style something, ya know?!

Anyway, I bought the HUGE Ikea lamp and was happy that it was big and showed off that empty corner so nicely, but liked the metal legs of the others much better. So, I DIY'ed an improvement for it, as I am wont to do...

The lamp is in lots of pieces, and you put it together, so before I did that, I spray painted allllll the metal pieces brushed silver. It looks way cooler now, I think...

(Now you can see what's poking into the top righthand corner of the first living room pic!)

But anyway, now I have a dilemma. I'm not in love with it, and it's a little toooo big, and... there are so many other cool lamps out there. Even at Target--like this beautiful white chunky floor lamp...

Which is, of course, a lot like the Z Gallerie Mariposa lamp...

Which is a lot like a very similar one at West Elm. But then, I think any of those might not be big enough to fill the space, anyway, so maybe I would still need a big arc lamp...

To complicate things, I found the Target arc lamp at Goodwill, brand new in box donated by Target, for $30 the other day when I was in a rush and bought it. I haven't set it up yet but I'm thinking I may have to sell my Craigslist/spray paint one and replace it with the perhaps more appropriately sized Target one. But, I realized I had to blog about my spray paint Ikea hack before I do!

So what do you think? What lamp shape and size do you imagine in that corner??

13 comments

3.01.2010

Antique store goodies

Happy March!
Yesterday I went to one of the antique stores in Downtown Hillsboro--it's not a thriving place, but the antique stores there seem to do really well and have been around for at least the 20 years my family has lived there.  Hillsboro used to be a small town but has turned into a suburb of Portland, but the downtown area is still cute and walkable, and it's nice to support local businesses.
I saw these milk glass sconces last time I was at the Hill Theater Antique Mall, but didn't think I needed them so I didn't buy them.  I went back hoping that by some miracle, they'd be there, and yay! they were, and the booth they were in was 35% off everything!
I am pretty spoiled by shopping at the Goodwill and Goodwill Outlet, where I buy glassware for 0.29 cents a pound, but you never find a pair like these.
One sign of a not-yet-discovered antiquing mecca, I guess, is the reasonable prices.  There were cute things in there for all kinds of steals!  Some of it was cheaper than the Goodwill markups!  These were like $15.95, then 35% off.
 
 
Here they are with their receipt.  I love how low-tech it is... I can't even read the guy's handwriting.
They don't hardwire, so I can just mount them on the wall.  I'm thinking on either side of the bed, although I kind of already have lamps there (not matching ones like I'd like, though, so maybe I should do sconces instead?).  Where else can you put matching sconces??  On either side of... a mirror/matel?  Uh...?  Any ideas would be welcome!
Have you had any recent success at antique stores?
5 comments

2.05.2010

White spray paint solutions: lamps

I am in a lamp phase right now.  I love lamps.  My eye goes right to them in magazine pictures, stores, design blogs... siiiiigh.  Unfortunately, on a tight budget, it's hard to get the fabulous lamp look (especially if you want things to match).  I'm still working on two pretty-much-matching lamps for either side of my bed, but through lots of Goodwill-ing, I acquired a funky 60's glass lamp base and a cute modern bubble lamp.
Inspired by this Serena and Lily lamp, Crate and Barrel, and other lovely places, I wanted all-white lampage.

So I took this:
And gave it quite a few very light coats of white spray paint.  I bought two white shades from IKEA (I wanted a drum shape but this was the closest I could find, and they were only $10 each), and put this cutie on the dresser next to the bed.
There are a few imperfections, and spray-painting something super smooth like glass is generally a dumb idea (there are cracked places already, but I tried to cover them up by scratching them off and painting over):
But oh, well.  In general I looooooove it!  I wish I had another just like it so we could have matching lamps, but I doubt that's gonna happen.  I will try to find another similarly shaped base, spray paint it, and give it the same shade (I mentioned I bought two).
While I was thinking about white lamps, I remembered a cute-shaped lamp I got at Goodwill Outlet ages ago:
I topped it with an Urban Oufitters (circa 2003) shade I had lying around, but it has little scratches and dents in the paint and the black is so not me right now.  So I spray-painted it!
I also tried it with this clearance IKEA shade:
Which shade do you like better on it?  It's not going to go in the bedroom (I don't think) either way.  I can't put the plain white shade on it because it takes a lamp harp and the bubbly base doesn't.  Unless I somehow rig or electrical-tape a lamp harp on! (Uh, this is not above me..).  So for now, no matchy-matchy lamps.  But I am so excited by what white spray paint can do to a tired household fixture!
12 comments

11.12.2009

Spray paint improves my funky cool lamp

I picked up this lamp at the Goodwill Outlet today for $5.  Everything there is sold by pound but lamps are either by pound or $5 each, regardless of size.  This thing is super heavy, so I paid the unit price. 

The shade isn't quite right, I know, but it's the best I could do right away.  It's an odd shape and size to get a shade for... I will keep looking.  Anyway, this thing was not nearly so attractive when I got it, and I can tell it's from an era where brown oak paneling and harvest gold carpets were in:

Maybe that's not the original harp?  It's so small for the huuuuuuge base.  It looks so bottom-heavy with a smallish shade and harp.  Anyway, I just threw some spray paint on it--black gloss, $0.99 at Lowe's.  I thought about doing it a color, and maybe sometime I will!  It reminds me of some of the cool big lamps I've been seeing, here are just a few from Crate and Barrel:
 
 
  

2 comments

10.30.2009

Eco Craft idea

Today I did a wild and crazy craft project idea that I got from the book Eco Craft, which I've seen at JoAnn and Powell's.  See:
They have some beautiful lamp shade-type ideas that are made from recycled materials... there is a great milk jug one, and the plastic bag one that I copied, and a great room divider made from 6-pack plastic loops.  So check out the lovely hanging lamp shade that I made from one white and one tan cheap plastic Safeway-type bags, then ironed on to a metal circular frame that used to have tassels on it:

All you do is iron the bags together and they make a lovely, semi-transparent, homemade paper-look that you see at IKEA, etc.  And it's so fun!
No comments

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