Friday 7 March 2014

Updating a thrifted lamp.

before
 I found a lamp at a garage sale about a year ago and knew it could be saved and made into something nice for the house.I liked the details on the base but it needed some work before I would actually use it. This was such an easy DIY and I am blown away by how much better it now looks. Let's take it back to the before...







And now the how to... Steps to an updated lamp:
1. Paint the base. I sanded it lightly and gave it two coats of china white and two coats of a pale yellow I had lying around.
2.Find a lampshade. The original lampshade was too big and bulky so I found a free lampshade on the roadside. This one was in good condition and much smaller.
3. Make a template out of craft paper by tracing around the lamp
4. Use the craft paper template to cut out some fabric. I chose a beautiful yellow and black floral fabric that I had bought extra of (the rest of the fabric will hopefully be backing for a quilt).
5. Make sure the fabric fits the lampshade. Slowly attach the fabric in small section using mod podge and a paint brush.
6.When all the fabric has been applied use mod podge to hold the edges in place and pin down with safety pins to hold in place. I also chose to add some yellow ribbon on the inside of the lampshade to finish all the edges off neatly.
The before and after really shows the massive difference.
 And now for some detail shots:

To make the base and top (where the fabric was cut off) a bit neater I trimmed it back and mod podged some plain yellow ribbon around the edges. I am just so pleased with how it turned out. It's such a cute and unique lamp and just perfect for the nursery. It actually worked out far better than I thought it would be and the whole process was quite easy, only taking a few hours. I think I'll  be searching some more thrift shops for lamps, after all I still have plenty of mod podge, fabric and ideas :)
Lisa x
P.S I'm linking up with

2 comments:

  1. So adorable! Who would think it's the same lamp? I used to have 20-plus lamps in my apartment, all thrifted! I would change up the shades but I'm not at all crafty .....

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  2. This is so cute! I love that you have a vision! Thanks for sharing at TTF!

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