This little light

It's finished and has been making the rounds.

Thanks to Apartment Therapy for the write-up, my little light is enjoying its 15 minutes of fame.
It's also been featured over at a few blogs which I plan to highlight some time. I received a sweet email telling me it has been all over Pinterest too so I had to go there and see. Unfortunately it was in its unfinished state. I debated on not showing it until it was all said and done but I couldn't wait. I do things in real time -my life and kids, work, cleaning house, running around - that all comes before projects and sometimes during, so then I have to stop and catch up. That's just the way it is around here.

So sometimes you'll just get the current status of a project and may have to visualize the rest until I can carve out time. But I'll get there eventually! You can see the project's stages here and here. The finished project and how we had to customize the way it hangs can be found here.




If you think that is cool, wait until you see the next project Jon and I have slated! We were just talking about it this morning and are planning to start on it this weekend if the weather is nice. I can't tell you how excited I am. It's been in the vault, aka my mind, for a long, long time.
It has to do with these grey beauties.

Paint stir sticks - a new look in lighting

Riddle:
What do you get when you cross an old thrift store lampshade with 50 million paint stir sticks?

This

Okay it was more like 42 stir sticks but who's counting? Probably the paint desk people. When I asked if they sold them in bulk, they answered, "No, take as many as you want." I told them I needed a lot and they said, "Go on, go ahead, take a bunch."

So I grabbed a bunch, pretended I didn't notice they were looking at me funny and ran out. I did this over and over until I had the amount I needed. Sometimes I tried to be a little more nonchalant about it by saying "Oh, how did 12 paint sticks end up in my cart?? Crazy kids, ha ha ha." during checkout. When in doubt, blame the 5 year-old.

I'm sure there is a picture of me behind the desk warning the clerks of the crazy lady with a stir stick fetish. No fetish, just an idea I had to see through.
(But if you've ever worked retail there are those pictures behind the desk of serial returners, bad check writers, irate customers and other types. Just a little fyi.)

Anyway, I have had this idea on my mind since I saw it on HGTV about 3 years ago. And when I found this huge lampshade, I knew what I wanted to do with it. Then I made a mistake by dismantling it and couldn't put it back together correctly even after several attempts.

So, I found another shade ($2.00) which was smaller but left it intact and just hot glued the stir sticks to the outside, adjusting each one in order for the sticks to go around as straight as possible.



After I give it a coat of stain (since the stir sticks are made out of wood) and prime and paint the underside so the logo doesn't show, she will be ready to put into place. I am using the existing light fixture in the entrance so it will need to be painted as well (see 1st picture) and then I can finally see how this will all turn out and you'll be the next to know.