Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Personalize a Store-Bought Lamp in Less than 5 Minutes


Earlier this week I got off my lazy butt and finally showed you my Craft Room Reveal. {in all actuality, I spent a long time on my lazy butt writing that post, but you get my meaning}
I knew from the onset of putting the room together, that once I had a desk to work at, I was absolutely gonna want some task lighting. To be specific, a lamp.

I swear to you people that before starting this blog, I never even thought about lamps.
Really, I didn't.
Now though, if you scroll down and look to the right, you'll see that my two most popular posts are about lamps. I think I've blogged about lamps at least 3 times and now here comes a fourth.



About the time I really started thinking about purchasing a lamp for my craft room, wouldn't you know it, I got lucky. Lamps.com contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in receiving one of their lamps in exchange for telling you all about it on my blog.
Uh, yeah. That took about 0.2 seconds to contemplate and come up with a "yes"!

I went hunting through their site, and found the perfect one!

The Oscar Table Lamp. I chose mine in the Soy color, topped off with the Kimono Lamp Shade.

I crossed my fingers it would look as good as I hoped. I was really torn about the color of the lamp base since they had a blue option I almost went with but decided against at the last minute. When it came, I knew I'd made the right choice. The blue would have added just enough of the same color to be too much. And, if I ever change my mind about blue as an accent color, I don't have to worry about repainting a lamp base.



Although I loved the lamp when it came, I'm a DIY'er and apparently can't leave well enough alone.

I had the cross necklace hanging on my cork board, and one day had a hint of inspiration to throw it on the lamp. 
Once that was done, well… 
I thought the shade could maybe use a little bling of it's own. See where I'm headed here?


In my newly organized cabinets, I found a roll of glitter tape I had no recollection of buying. But it was perfect. 
Perfect width, perfect color, perfect bling. It even had the exact amount on the roll to cover the top and bottom of the shade perfectly.
It was only later that day as I was crowing to my daughter about how fast and simple the little make-over was that she informed me the glitter tape was hers.

Oops!

Guess I owe my blondie a trip to Michael's.



And it wouldn't be right to leave you today without showing you this little lamp at night.


Oh… and one more thing.
You can see in the pics that I have a plug in right there on the left. Unfortunately, I didn't want to plug the lamp in on that side, so I had to decide how to get the cord down the right side of the desk, across the floor and back behind the washer.

I found the quick and easy answer in my drawer. Command adhesive strips. I used these small ones cut in half lengthwise to keep the cord laying flat against the wall.


Worked like a charm so I thought you'd wanna know. :)



Check out my Craft Room Reveal as well as all the details I've shared to date on this room using the links below.

Craft Room Reveal
Horribly disturbing and humiliating BEFORE Photo!
Getting the room organized, not pretty, just functional.
DIY Cabinet Pedestal to store the laundry baskets.
Chalkboard Wall Paint DISASTER
Stencilled Cork Board
Paint Dipped Starbuck Frappuccino Bottles



Disclosure: I was compensated for this post by Lamps.com in the form of a free lamp. All opinions,  and extra sparkly bling are my own. Like I said, I just can't help myself.


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Monday, January 27, 2014

Craft Room Reveal


Today is a special day.
It's the first time ever that I'm going to share a room reveal on the blog. 
There's a good reason too, since it's the only room that's actually completely decorated in this house {we've only lived here 3 years, don't pressure me}.

I've talked about my Craft/Laundry room off and on for the past six months {maybe longer} and... It. Is. Finally. Finished.

I've also decided to start calling it the Craft Room. No more Laundry. Yes, we do some laundry in here, but it's not fun or exciting, so I'll pretend it doesn't happen. It's my room delusion, I can do what I want… 

This is gonna be picture heavy. Over the next few weeks, I'll be showing many of the details that have drawn this makeover into a half a year project, but not today.
Today is reserved for the cold hard evidence that I can actually finish something I've started!


Yippee!!!

Hold on tight folks, here we go!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
First, I thought it might simplify things if you had an idea about the layout of the room. That said, here's my version of a "360 degree view". 



The chalkboard wall. I've wanted one forever. Yes, I know, everyone seems to have one now and I'm no exception. Don't care.



This room is a very small rectangle with a closet sized bite taken out of it. That's my sons closet jutting into the room here. This room was originally intended to be a third main-floor bedroom placed in-between our master bathroom and my sons room. When we built the house, we knew our family didn't need the room to serve as a bedroom, so we cut the room in half. Turning one side of the room into a second master closet and the other side into this room with a connecting door {I'll show you that door in a sec}. We can walk directly from the master through the bathroom and second closet, and take our dirty clothes off and put them directly in the washer. It's wonderful... and sometimes we actually do that instead of dropping the clothes on the bedroom floor.
Uh huh, we are those people. 




We discovered in our last house that the washer and dryer take up way less room when stacked. And in a room this little, that's important!
{I'm actually standing in the second master closet to take the pic above, that's how wide the room isn't}


Only one half of the room is a chalkboard. I went for a buttery yellow color on the rest of the room to brighten it up. Depending on the time of day, I think I've achieved it. Other times, hmm, maybe it's too dark. Oh well, I'm happy with it 95% of the time, and I think "that'll do Donkey, that'll do."


That's the door I was talking about that's leads to Mr. Concrete's closet. Not gonna lie, I never wanna have to share a closet again. Having my own is fabulous!


And that leads us back around to where we started. You can see the trim to the door we first went through on the far left. 
Tiny little room, but boy does it pack a punch now! Ready for more??
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alrighty, the details













The clipboards are cheapies from WalMart that I Mod Podged with scrapbook paper.









Mr. Concrete made these little shelves for me one afternoon while I slept between shifts. He used pre-made white laminate shelving and and the supports are a white composite.
Love. Them.  



And I have to say, as silly as it may be, I think my favorite thing about the entire room has got to be the little birdcage Washi Tape holder. Thrift store find and some spray paint is a win pretty much every time!





Whew!
That was way more pictures than anyone ever has a right to share at once.
I just couldn't help myself, I'm so thrilled to finally have it finished and functional! 
Ok, I'll leave you now, but promise to be back shortly with all the nitty gritty details.



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