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!!!

http://timholtz.com/12-tags-of-2013-march/

12 Lamps of 2013

Hi there Tim.  What is your preferred form of verbing your name?  Because when  I saw this lamp at Ikea the first thing that ran through my head was that it was just crying to be Tim Holtz-ed(?).  Initially I was  going to Christmas tag it and having one at either end of my dining room side board.  But, as I mentioned before, with the move and all, things got a bit timey wimey and the Craft Cupboard Under The Stairs has just newly started to function again.

the shade that goes with the lamp is a flat strip of plastic with notches at the ends to hold it in a round shape.  It has holes in it to accomodate the bracket that fits on the lamp base.  I used the as a template to create the shade out of a recycled manila folder.  Rather than cutting the tabs, I just overlapped the straight edges and secured with brads.  The overall height of the lampshade is a bit longer than the one that comes with the lamp - a preferable length to me.

I picked this stamp because it seemed to lend itself to layering and fit the Valentine theme.  I used Kraft core and the postcard texture fade x 2.  I cut them in half and pieced together with tissue tape.  I followed Tim pretty closely, with very few exceptions: http://timholtz.com/12-tags-of-2013-february/.  You probably recognize the vintage lace decorate strip cut from metal tape.  The pointy finger is stamped on craft card cut with the ticket mover and shaper and the other ticket is stamped with “To my dearly beloved”.  I secured both of these with brads I covered the base of the lamp with flowers cut using Tattered Florals Bigz die, mover and shapers and decorative strip.

And Tim is right.  I had a blast with the distress markers and water brush .  I am not at all good with water colors but it seems easy to get nice results.