Wednesday, March 20, 2013

12 Lamps of 2013 - March



Yep, it’s a twofer.  Here’s my March lamp.  I wanted to use most of the inspiration and many of the elements of Tim’s card plus fill in the blanks with tattered florals.  Here’s how it worked out:
I don’t have the mini bunny, so I knew I would have to use the tattered floral mini instead.  Since I had more room to work with, I used it with the Baroque die.  I was surprised to find a piece of white coredinations in my stash – not kraft core, more vanilla, but definitely a good stand in.  Sanded and inked as prescribed.  I knew that I wanted to use the inked tinsel for the shade bottom, so I inked some ribbon and wrapped it randomly around a spare bit of card stock and attached it behind the floral.
I have the holiday paper that Tim used and after studying the sweet images for a while, I decided that I didn’t want to cover them up.  I cut each one out, rounded the corners, ran the edges around the nib of a silver sharpie and attached them to the shade with brads.  (I used mostly brads and hot glue for attaching – not sure if adhesives would melt when the light is on).
I don’t have the grass die, so that was a complete pass and as I mentioned I wanted to use the tinsel as the lower edge.  I inked another piece of ribbon and tied it around the baroque ornament.  It was still looking a bit naked so I cut a frame out of black chip board using the mini baroque and did a tarnished silver finish, by doing a multi level silver embossing powder, UTEE, silver, UTEE – keep going until it looks awesome then STOP.


For me, the real star of this show is how really brilliant distress paint looks on metal!  Amazing!! I used the recommended foliage bits as a much needed embellishment for my beribboned floral /baroque thingy.  Now I want to paint all of the brads on my tattered florals.
So, with the elements of the tag done, I started hot gluing on the florals.  I used a piece of green wired burlap to loosely wrap around the lamp base, then added more florals.   I will tell you honestly that I was  amazed that the ribbon actually stayed put where I wanted it, with just a little bit of tape holding it in place at the top  and bottom.  For the lamp shade,  I was  pleased to find some robin’s egg blue chalk board paper in my stash that worked out quite well.  It takes 2 pieces: each  8 ½” high, 9 ½ wide, overlapped by 1/2“ and secured with brads.  I use the proved IKEA lamp shade as a template to poke the holes for the shade internal bracket thingy.
Love my lamp.  Thanks Tim for the inspiration and education!!!



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