The current evolutionary state of an awesome lamp.

A while back I bought a lamp from the Goodwill. She needed to be rewired but she was super pretty. I brought her home, rewired her and promptly forgot about her.

I got a sudden urge to paint something the other day and this lovely lamp happened to be in my line of sight. Voila! A project was born.

Unfortunately I can't find an unfussed with 'before' picture, so we'll all just deal with an early-evolution pic as our introduction shot. K? K.

Here she is all cleaned up and taped. I scrubbed her with a Comet/water paste that i mixed up. She's ready for her makeover!



Pretty, right? Right.

I primed her with Valspar primer.



Then painted her purple! Yep, purple. It is the color of royalty you know.



I also put a couple coats of poly on just for good measure.

Well, at this point I was a bit stumped. The lovely lady didn't come with a shade and what we had been using on her was, well, fugly.



Was I right? Fugly. I wandered around the internet for a while before I came up with something that I thought would be do-able. What did I come up with, you ask? Ruffles!! Not just any ruffles. And certainly not lacy girly ruffles. Haphazard, messy, possibly weird, awesome ruffles!!

First I spray primed the fugly shade. I was going to go buy some felt and make it sort of fancy, but then I found an old white sheet in a box! SCORE.

I cut the sheet into 2" ish strips.



When you're done cutting you should have a big pile of sheet. (say it out loud, it's funnier)



Then I used hot glue to stick the strips to the shade.



I tried to place the strips so that they were glued down the center. I thought if I did that I would have two ruffles per strip and wouldn't have to glue as many.



When I was done gluing and was sure the poly was dry I pulled off all the tape and assembled her in a whir of impulsive creativity.



Tom and I named her Stella. (HI TOM!!!)


The before and after.





I love love LOVE the shade. Just not on that lamp. Crap. I'm thinking about putting a glaze on her too.

I've already acquired another shade (woot Goodwill) and am plotting it's demise, eh I mean uh, refurbishment as we speak.

So let me know what you think about Stella. Any suggestions?

Love ya, later!