Friday, October 5, 2012

chevron and lamp d.i.y.

now that we've started buying furniture for our living room, in between each big purchase, i have been pinning different ideas and looks that i want to incorporate into the room.

 if you remember back in february, when i photoshopped what i wanted our living room to look like, i had picked out some teal glass lamps (below).



 problem is, i love this lamp, but not enough to pay almost $400 for two of them. i looked everywhere for a cheaper version, but with no luck. :( but then it dawned on me after looking through multiple pins on pinterest, that if i could find an empty based glass lamp that i liked, that i could just paint the inside!
pinterest ftw! 

below is my DIY on how to achieve the same thing 
(added plus is you can customize to any color)

i ended up liking a glass lamp from ikea (which you can find here) called JONSBRO for about $40 + matching shade of $10 = $50. I had already had some paint in the color I wanted from back in the day that i used on some diy wedding crafts, but  i did get them from Hobby Lobby for about $4 each.

all i did was use 4 parts of the teal paint and 1 part of the white paint mixed together 
(it was a little too teal without the white added to soften/lighten the color)

then i got a standard paint brush and started painting the insides of the lamp. i had to paint over a few spots since it doesn't evenly cover the first time around. also, the good thing about the packaging is that when you are done and ready to let it dry, you can put the lamp in the box upside down to dry.



i will say it does take about 6 hours to dry, but afterwards, it looks just as good as it if you bought it off the shelf! (unfortunately, i don't have a final pic of it with the lamp shade since a part was missing and i am currently waiting for the replacement in the mail from ikea)


so for a total of about $100 ($50 per lamp) i was able to get exactly what i wanted for a 1/4 of the price!


now on to my mantel project:

so i am pretty much obsessed with chevron (especially grey) and love this inspiration photo from pinterest


since it was just a chevron print and nothing too complicated i decided on would paint the chevron canvas instead of trying to find/buy one. it actually ended up being way more geometric than i expected, but i do advise to not do it by eyeing it, as after you sketch out the lines (while time consuming) pays off in the end

i got a 24" x 36" (that was the biggest the would fit) from michaels, i think it was about $35 dollars but had a 40% off coupon so it was only about $22!

again, i already had some white and grey paint from previous paint projects (but it should only cost you about $6-8 for both paints. also, i lighted up the grey a little with white paint since the grey i had was a little too dark.

to do the lines, i just took a piece of cardboard i had and made a right angle with it and started to trace the lines with a pencil, i didn't want the chevron too big or too small so i made the angles to where i had about 4 points going across the top. then, i decided where the bottom points would end and then drew a straight line all the way across the bottom. i did that so that i knew where to start the next set of zig-zag lines and also to make sure each line was the same width all the way down. i just kept going until i got to the bottom. and then filled it in with the paint!



you can see below where my lines were



and the final product! 
(ps. love the camera josh got me from target!)


happy friday!
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