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

The Thrifty Groove

What-About

Redouxinteriors

My Turn For Us

Kitchen Fun with my 3 Sons

Freaky Keen

The Best Blog Recipes

The Jenny Evolution

Light it up.

I seem to have been getting lucky lately with finding colourful lamps while thrifting. I've wanted a yellow lamp for ages and at a recent garage sale found this cute one for $1. I love the colour and in the spirit of creating a very cheerful and bright guest rooms, I also picked up this little blue lamp at a different garage sale for $1.

It's always good to find cute lamps on garage sales but there's also much enjoyment in updated a tired old object. I had this old cream lamp shade lying around.There's nothing wrong with it but it doesn't really suit our home and I thought it might look interesting in the guest room (going with a yellow theme) and then the blue lamp would look great in the second guest room*.

*Husband and I live in a country town of 15000 app 3 hours from the city so when friends and family come to visit they always stay the night and so we need a few guest rooms.

I  had read about spray painting lampshades and thought I'd give it a try

It's looking great though I'm trying to work out whether to spray the inside too. I still need to fix up the base to match but I'm pretty pleased with how to shade looks now. When it's all done I'll share some snaps of our ever evolving main guest room.

Do you think I should do a plain yellow base or striped white and yellow?

As usual I'm linking up my thrifting finds with her library adventures and Apron thrift girl.

Happy thrifting!

Lisa x