Hello all I hope I find you well today, Virginia here from Celtic House blog. Having recently redecorated our bedroom and changed the accent colour from a dark purple to a bright pillowbox red, I was faced with the prospect of changing lots of things in the room and the rocketing price tag that went with that. So I got to wondering whether any of the current items could be revamped into something that would go with the new colour scheme and my attention turned to the bedside lamps.
I had purchased them originally because they had a dark purple ceramic base and a cream shade which matched our old scheme perfectly.
First of all I unplugged them (obviously), then removed the shade and bulb. I covered the base in strips of ripped book paper which I attached with a light pva glue and left them to dry. Once dry I lightly gessoed over the top to tone down the paper so it was more subtle, I then took a mask and some distress inks and went over the base, then splodged some red paint randomly on the same and added a stamp.
The lampshade was a little more difficult as the shade had quite a fibrous finish to it as it was fabric which meant that I ended up with lots of fibres on my mask grrrrr - you've been warned, I think a paper based shade would have been easier to work with. Finally I added red paint and stamped to match the base.
Finally I finished the shade off with a strip of black velvet ribbon attached with my hot glue gun and it was all done. Given that I already owned the mask, paint, ink, stamp and ribbon the project actually cost me nothing to do and was great fun. Why not try a bit of upcycling yourself?
A great idea - I'm eyeing up our lamps already! x
Posted by: Leanne | May 21, 2013 at 10:06 AM