Wow, really? March 22, 2011
I haven’t updated since Feb 8th? Sometimes I am a great blogger and then other times I’m just terrible! Obviously lately I fall into the terrible category. Sorry about that. I’d say that I’ll be better but that might end up being a lie, so I’ll just say nothing and make a really terrible segue to my next subject…
So I’ve been home from the Philippines for almost a month now. Honestly, it feels normal. I have been busy visiting family, applying for jobs, and missing my boyfriend now living on the other side of the world (boo). I’ve also been on this new “remake” fix. One blog I looooove to follow is Better After. All these people send in pics of things they bought that were less than stellar, then redid. And now it looks awesome. So I started perusing craigslist and hoping to find some things to redo. I have bought a few things but they are not done. My first item that is done is this:
Obviously this is the before. While in Nashville, my awesome, over-90 granny had to be moved into a nursing home. We went to clean out her apartment and this lamp was about to go in the Goodwill pile when I thought “wait! I can fix it!” So we brought it home. I knew I wanted to paint it turquoise and recover the lampshade. First I bought the spray primer and paint color and then was on the hunt for the perfect fabric. While at Target a few days later I came across a beautiful bedding set AND they sold a sham to it separately. I bought the sham and brought it home hoping that I could use it to cover the lampshade.
I spent some time while watching TV pulling out all the seams with a seamripper and then traced the lampshade on to the opened sham. I knew it would be tight. Once I cut it out and started wrapping it around the wire frame I wasn’t sure it would fit. I started pinning them in place and sometimes it was really really REALLY tight. My original plan was to hot glue the fabric on but I doubted glue would be strong enough so I came up with an alternative: keep the pins in and cover them with some kind of ribbon detail. So I tracked down some bias tape that blended with it’s shade of blue and hot glued it overtop. Today I finally got around to painting the lamp and it is now complete! It is not perfect, but I am really proud of my first project. See for yourself.
More to come!