Lamp Project

Hello from Salt Creek Ranch.  

Today was a sunny - windy - chilly day here on the ranch and a great day to stay in the craft room.  I have been wanting to try my hand at re-furbishing a lamp so a quick trip to the Dollar Store and ... wa-la .......... lamp project. 

Michelle at at Sweet Something Design has a great tutorial on a beautiful finish for projects like a lamp.  Fortunately or maybe unfortunately this is not a "how to" tutorial - maybe a "how I didn't follow her instructions"  but probably not a "you should do this one" tutorial.   Okay.

At any rate, lets just get on with it, shall we?  

So here's my $10.00 Dollar Store lamp.  Nice for a first try..... come to think of it, it's probably a little pricey for what I could have found at a Salvation Army store, no, this is no .99 cent great bargain lamp, this is a 10 big ones - little bitty lamp, plastic at that!  

This reminds me of what God said to the Israelites when they walked in the desert for 40 years, instead of eight days,  "because you mur-mur".  I feel like I'm mur-murring, complaining, negative thinking, stinkin thinkin cause really no matter how it turned out, I had a good time doing it.

Nice beginning, though, painters tape on the parts I don't want painted.

Her instructions say to use a spackle knife or putty knife .... I opted for my hand.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I seem to remember her saying, "if you want to do a lamp like this click here for instructions" ... or was it something like "I would not use a lamp like this"!  

Her tip was to skip the spackle part and  use spray paint but I read that just a little to late.

Anyhoo.

You know that quite little voice, the small whisper that pops up and you quickly smash down?

 Yea, that one.
I tried to find ribbon to put on the lamp shade or maybe re-cover the shade with burlap or scrapbook paper or maybe fringe on the bottom but atlas, nothing worked.  Mainly because I didn't want to work at trying to figure out how to re-cover the whole thing, two - I didn't have enough fringe although that was cute and three, the ribbon just kind of said no.

So, I carefully painted it.

Next step is to paint the base coat.  So far so good.

And then ......... I decided to go out on my own and use this stuff that sounds soooooo good.  It's  called chipping cream.  It goes on in between a base coat and the top coat of paint and then you are suppose to be able to scrap the top layer off and it leaves a chipped look.  This is the second time I have tried using this stuff and I am in no way knocking the Country Living Chipping Cream, lets just get that out in the open here.  It's not them, it's me.  

 

I'm sure of it.  However I will say that I am not giving up.  I will conquer the chipping cream!

Next I used this fabulous paint, seriously love this paint.  It's super thick and it goes on as thick as you want it to and I like it.

Now it was time for the chipping the paint part.  And fortunately for you I didn't take pictures of this part cause ... I don't know why.  I guess I was too busy trying to figure out how to take just the top layer of paint off.  I sanded, I scraped, and I sanded some more, then I scrapped some more.  In some places I chipped all the way to the plastic, I didn't feel like I was applying to much pressure.  Maybe I didn't let it dry long enough.

When all else fails rub on some toner or you may have seen it called glaze but not here, here we call it toner.  Don't ask me why.  

And here is my result.

I don't know, it's pretty shabby alright.  It wasn't the look I was going for.  If you check out Michelle's site you see but what the heck, it's cuteish.

AND now for the finishing touch, I cut the letter S out of scrapbook paper and learn how to make this adorable burlap flower.  

I have plans for this flower.

Have a great day my dear friends, I am going to see my grand babies, Miss Sarah, Mr K-Bob and little Anah.  I can't wait, see you in a few.