House Revivals: Wild Pants and a Lamp Get a Make-Over!

Monday, March 21, 2011

Wild Pants and a Lamp Get a Make-Over!

A couple of months ago I posted about this lamp and a pair of wild pants from the local Goodwill Outlet. The lamp had definitely seen better days, and the pants still had the tags on them.

Here is what the lamp looks like today!

I love how the black glossy finish brings out the cool texture of the lamp.

The lamp was painted with a good quality black craft paint, but it wasn't very glossy. The solution, I found, was to apply glossy Mod Podge over the painted lamp.

The wild pants were used to cover a GW shade, but it still wasn't wild enough, so I created some stylized flowers from some strips of jute burlap I already had for a flouncy border. I wanted to keep the project light hearted and fun!

Before recovering the shade, I carefully peeled back the trim from the top and bottom of the shade...

... then reused the pieces after the lamp was covered, securing the trim with a high tack glue.

The flower flounce was inspired by the apple green flowers on the wild pants fabric.

These strips of apple green burlap were left-over from being used as a Christmas tree garland a few years ago.

I simply folded the strips in half, being careful not to crease them, and cut looped fringe into the folded edge. Each flower consisted of a piece of this folded looped fringe about eight inches long that was gathered in the center (along the uncut edge) and glued to the base of the shade. I used a needle and thread to gather mine, but you could used hot glue. The centers, are just bits of turquoise fringe cut from the wild pants lining fabric.

On a difficulty scale of 1 to 10, this project is about a two.

It's a fun, not too serious look.

I like that it looks good with "beachy" finishes, but if I get tired of the wild shade, I can always rip everything off and do something more "serious".