Guest Post: Ombre Lamp Tutorial

Happy Thursday All! Today we have a guest post from one of my sponsors this month - Ayla from Eyelah blog (and shop). Her blog is full of great inspiration, and her shop features tons of awesome clutches and pouches. Be sure to check her out!

Hi I’m Ayla over from Eyelah blog. Today I am going to share a tutorial on how to paint an ombre lamp! It’s surprising simple and you can get it done within an hour or so.
 

Supplies:

-Paint Brushes
-Lamp: I bought mine for 2 bucks at the goodwill. I also purchased a new lamp shade which was 10.00 from Ikea.

-Paint
-Painter’s Tape
 

You want to start off with taping the base and the light-bulb case portion. Try to make sure you get tape as even as possible to avoid any small amounts of paint getting through.

I started with a layer of white paint to cover the designs on the lamp.

I then started with the darkest color at the base of the lamp.

You can either buy the different shades you need or you can just create the shades by adding white
paint to the darker color. I like to create my own shades so I get it just right. It does take some playing
around with the paint.
 

After you get the shades you like you want to gradually add lighter colors as you paint up the lamp. It
may take a few coats depending on the color and how light or dark it is.

At the very top of the lamp right underneath the light bulb base I left as white.

After you finished painting the lamp you can add a clear gloss spray paint to have a nice shiny finish.

After your lamp dries, just add your shade and you are all done!! Enjoy the pretty lamp!

I love the way her lamp turned out - I may have to try this soon! Thanks so much for sharing Ayla! Be sure to visit Ayla's blog and shop, or say hi to her on Twitter or Facebook!

I hope you all have a great week!

 

Refinished Lamp

Happy New Year All! I hope you had a fun and safe New Year's! I feel very productive already in 2012. I worked on a few projects yesterday and wrapped this one up that I started a little while ago.

Remember my vintage button lampshade? Well I finally got around to painting the $5 lamp I thrifted to go with the shade. I loved the design of the lamp, it just needed a makeover before it got placed in the guest room. Here's what it looked like when I bought it:

 

I got the lamp home and found out it didn't work, but Handy Andy worked his magic and fixed it up. Then I cleaned it with soap and water and taped off the electrical parts.

At first I thought about keeping the two-toned look, and just painting the darker parts of the lamp, but I couldn't find a spray paint with the hammered finish in a color I liked. Instead, I decided to paint the entire lamp with the same blue paint I used on my frame for the guestroom and then finish it with a high gloss lacquer. I used Rust-oleum Wildflower Blue, satin finish [love this color!], and then coated it with Rust-oleum Specialty Lacquer. I did two coats of the blue and one coat of the lacquer.

 

I love the way it turned out with the gloss finish! It looks great with the lampshade in my guestroom.

I'm excited to be chipping away at finishing the decor of the guestroom, one project at a time! I'm also working on refinishing the light fixtures in our kitchen and will be sharing those soon.

How did you start the New Year?

P.S. Linking up here:

Pinterest Thursday: Button Lampshade

I've really been focusing my decorating efforts on the guest room lately. The framed fabric piece I did recently was for the guest room, the rocking chair cushion that Handy Andy's Grandma T helped me make (yet to unveil) is for the guest room, and so is this project...

Here's what I found on Pinterest [I couldn't find the original source for the life of me, sorry!]:

 

Isn't that amazing?! So, I decided that's what I wanted to do for the guest room night table lamp. A few problems: 1. I didn't have enough buttons, and 2. I didn't have a lamp for the night stand yet.

Well, I know I already mentioned how much Grandma T taught me in this post [the woman is awesome], but she also gave me a bunch of sweet stuff. Including a ton of vintage buttons. She has several containers of really cool vintage buttons and told me to take what I wanted. Awesome. She had so many and a lot of them were the color scheme I wanted for my lamp! And how cool is it that the lamp shade would be covered in vintage buttons?! Problem #1 solved!

Problem #2 was easy to solve -- thrift store. I found a gem of a lamp and a perfect shade, all for $8! Unfortunately, the lamp didn't actually work when I got it home, but Handy Andy worked his magic and it's as good as new! [I will show the lamp at a later date, after I get a chance to give it a little makeover].

Alright, now for the lampshade. Here's what I started with:

 

Look at all that vintage goodness!

As an extra touch to the shade, I decided to make some fabric yoyo's to back some of the buttons [I forgot to take pictures of this step]. They are super easy to make and are so cute! There are tons of tutorials online, but I used this one. While I was working on those, Handy Andy was contributing to the project in his own special way...

I promise you, I had nothing to do with this. I just turned around and he had the shade on his head. He was completely enthralled with the show he was watching, so I slyly took a picture.

Anyway, I made about 5 yoyo's and sewed buttons to the centers. Then I hot glued them in random spots on the shade and then went to town with the rest of the buttons. 

 

I love it! I didn't fill mine in as much as the one from Pinterest, because I liked the way it looked at this point.  It turned out so cute and will be such a fun touch to the room once the lamp is finished! I love that the buttons are all vintage -- Thanks Grandma T!

I hope you're having a productive week!

 

P.S. Linking up here: