Category: House Stuff

I’m making some new pillows for the bed in our room. I thought that with the compass above the bed, making some pillows that look like Navy signal flags. I looked up some styles to see what would work with our room. I also know signal flags have an alphabet letter and a meaning associated with each flag.

After looking up some flags that would work, I checked out their meaning, and I’m not so sure they are the best idea for the bedroom. The meanings begin to take on a different connotation. Then again, for couples who have trouble communicating, maybe these are an excellent idea.

 

I like the idea of some yellow with my gray and navy. This flag means, “I am maneuvering with difficulty; keep clear.”

 

I find it funny to see these paired together. Yes, I’m easily amused.

The front pillow means, “Stop carrying out your intentions and watch for my signals.”

The rear pillow says, “My vessel is stopped; making no way.”

 

Another one that shows my sophomoric humor.

The pillow means, “Conducting flag hoist drill.”

 

This one can mean, “Do not pass in front of me” or “Keep clear; engaged in trawling.”

 

“I require medical assistance” and “I require assistance” pillows.

       

 

 

Back to a serious note, I like this style. I may get some linen and stencil a design.

 

Now to decide which one to do. I think I’m going to stick with our initials.

 

So who’s ready to make a lamp?

For this tutorial, I’ll show you how I made my lamp, but you may need to alter the directions a bit depending on the size of the lamp you have.

Things You Need

I started with a buffet lamp.

4 candle holders from the Dollar Tree (pretend you see 4 of them here). I bought 5, so we could practice with one, but I only needed 4 for my lamp. If your lamp is shorter, you may only need 3. Be sure that the stack nicely together.

And a diamond drill bit to make the holes in the glass. I used a 1/2 inch bit.

You will also need spray paint for the base and candle holders as well as some glue appropriate for glass.

Taking the Lamp Apart

Begin by disassembling your lamp. Disconnect the wires and from the socket part by loosening the screw on the sides and slipping off the wire. I marked the wire letting me know which wire went to which screw, but that may not be necessary. I’m not electrician, so I just try to reconnect stuff the way I found it. Leave only the base and the pole holding the electrical wires. The socket just screws onto the post and is easy to remove.

I didn’t take a picture of the naked lamp. Sorry!

Painting the Lamp

Take the naked lamp outside and spray paint it. I decided to use a glossy black.

It will take several coats. Use light layers and let it dry well in between coats. Just spray the base and don’t worry about the pole. You won’t see the pole in the end anyway.

I found that propping the small parts with a dowel helps you get paint on all sides easily.

I ended up needing to go back and paint another piece the lamp needed, but I didn’t know it until the end, so you may want to spray extra pieces to save time in the end. It was difficult to know how many filler pieces you need since you don’t assemble until the end. I don’t like taking the glass globes on and off more than necessary.

Drilling the Holes

Next, you need to make a hole in the bottom of each piece of glass. This part is a little tricky, but totally doable.

Take a piece of paper and trace around the bottom of your candle holder. Fold the paper in half from side to side. Form a crease. Open the paper and fold in half again, from top to bottom. Where the two sections intersect, you have the center of your circle. Mark the center with a dot.

Place the paper under the candle holder so you can see the center mark. Mark the inside of the glass with a Sharpie. It is important to place the mark on the inside because you will be using water in the next step and you don’t want to wash your mark off.

Drilling the holes is easiest if you have two people. I purchased an extra candle holder so we could practice cutting the hole on it.

To drill a hole in glass, you need a diamond drill bit. Measure the diameter of the center pole staying in the lamp. I bought a 1/2 inch bit because was big enough to slide the pole through, but not so big that the lamp would wiggle around. You can find these bits at any major hardware store.

My husband helped me with this part. For some reason he didn’t seem to trust me with combining water and power tools! That was probably a pretty smart move. I would have had a hard time taking pictures at the same time too. So I accepted his help.

Place a towel in the bottom of your sink to help secure the candle holder while drilling the bottom. Place the candle holder on the towel with the bottom turned up towards you. Use a towel you plan to throw away in the end. When we finished, we had lots of tiny shards of glass on the towel and decide it wasn’t worth the risk of getting hurt later by a hidden piece of glass, so we threw the towel away. Just keep that in mind when choosing what to use.

When drilling through glass, you need lots of water to help keep the glass and bit cool. It also helps decrease the glass dust produced by the drill. So as my husband drilled, I used the sprayer from the sink and kept a low flow of water hitting the surface the whole time.

He had to apply a decent bit of pressure as he drilled. Do your best to keep the drill centered. Once you get started, it will form a groove and that makes it easier to keep the bit from sliding as you drill. As you get close to breaking through, the sound changes just a bit and you know that just a few more seconds you will have the hole. You need to let up some pressure at that point or you risk chipping or cracking the glass because the weight of the drill may hit the glass.

Repeat on all the glass candle holders until you have the holes finished. Sorry about the bad photos. I was working on a crafting deadline and had to take pictures at night.

Painting the Glass

I tried 3 different ways of painting these. I tried craft paint. I tried acrylic paint and finally, I got out my trusty, rusty can of spray paint. Painting it with craft paint and acrylic paint didn’t work well because it was so thick, took forever to dry and then peeled right off like it was never there. I started off with rolling paint around in the glass and it covered well, but like I said, it just didn’t hold up like I wanted. So her’s what I did.

Wipe the inside of the candle holders with white vinegar. Apparently this helps condition the glass so the paint sticks better. I didn’t do this until I tried the spray paint, so I don’t know if it would have helped the other paints, but it was a cheap and easy thing to try before my third attempt and since the final try worked, I’m also passing on that bit of info.

Hold the spray paint in one hand and the candle holder in the other. Using quick spurts, spray the INSIDE of the glass. Spraying the inside helps keep the shiny milk glass look to the lamp.

It will take several layers of spray paint before it’s fully covered. Be careful to not overspray and cause the paint to run.

Once the paint is dry, if you got some paint on the outside of the glass, you can wipe it off with acetone.

Assembling the Lamp

Once all the paint is dry, start assembling the lamp. Place the first globe over the pole and let it rest on the base. Continue stacking until all of the candle holders are on the lamp.

To help secure the lamp, you need to glue each of the candle holders together. I used E-6000, but using a glass epoxy will probably hold better in the long run.

Run a bit of glue along the bottom rim of the candle holder. I stacked mine one at a time and applied the glue once I got it on the post. There was enough room to lift up and run the glue under the candle holder. I took the top candle holder off to see how that would work and I managed to get glue everywhere when I tried to thread it over the lamp post.

Can you see the glue here?

Continue stacking and gluing the candle holders until they are all on the lamp post.

Place the remaining pieces on the top of the lamp. When I first assembled the lamp, I didn’t realize I needed the larger piece. So I took the original pictures without is since it was still waiting for a couple coats of paint. Replace the socket and place the wires over the correct screws before adding to top of the light socket.

I glued a circular piece of fabric to the bottom of the lamp to make it cute too…not that anyone ever sees it.

Now your lamp is complete!

Recovering the Lampshade

I’ll share how to recover a lampshade. It’s nothing new or different, but I figured I’d add it since it was part of the new lamp.

Since I used a  buffet lamp, the shade that was with it was not the size I needed for my new lamp. So I found a black lampshade to use instead. That shade worked, but was a bit boring and  I couldn’t find anything else I liked.

So I headed over to the fabric store and purchased 1/2 yard of fabric.

To recover the shade, iron the fabric to remove the center crease.

Place the shade in the center of the fabric and begin to draw a line approximately 1 inch above and below the lamp.

Roll the lampshade to the right and continue to draw the line above and below the shade. The lines will begin to curve upward as you roll the lamp. Be sure you have enough fabric to overlap the short ends slightly.

Cut the fabric on the lines and run a line of glue along the inside bottom of the lampshade. Take one of the short sides and fold the fabric back a small amount and glue it. This will give you a finished edge to the back of the shade. I didn’t take a picture of that part, but I can if someone need a visual.

Turn the edge of the fabric up and press into place.

Run glue along the inside portion of the lampshade at the top and press the fabric down along the top too. Run one more strip of glue where the ends overlap in the back and glue that down.

Place your new lampshade onto your new lamp and enjoy!

I made it onto the next season of So You Think You’re Crafty! Thank you all for voting, even if it wasn’t for me. I hope you will continue to head over there weekly once the contest starts at the beginning of next year. It should be a fun ride and I’m so excited to be able to share this experience with my sis. I’m already hard at work on the first project for the contest and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

This was my audition piece. My sister ended up stomping everyone with her cute bowling set, so she set the bar pretty high for the rest of us!

Having a Christmas party and want a cute way to display wine charms? Place them on a small Christmas tree and let them double as table decoration. Then guests can easily see and choose what charm they want on their glass.

I made some custom charms and placed them on earring hoops (I couldn’t find regular wine charm holders) and they worked great!

By making them myself out of some small pieces of craft felt and some DMC floss, I was able to make the charms the colors and style I wanted. I made some holiday themed and I stitched some with initials on them for my party goers. These make a cute housewarming or hostess gift too.

For another theme, I took small glass ornaments and wrote on them with a metallic Sharpie marker. I wrote names, drew holiday pictures and wrote holiday words, like Peace and Joy.

Just in case you aren’t feeling too crafty, using store bought wine charms on the tree is quick, cute and easy. You can’t get much better than that combination.

So last year, my mom saw an idea online to make a wreath out of different sized glass ornaments. So my sister, mom and I decided to give it a go. I think that in the end, mine was the only one that went. Mom ended up redoing hers several times and then dropped and broke some of it. I think it’s in their basement. My sister thought hers looked too much like an Easter craft because of the colors she chose. I thought both of them did a great job and they turned out cute, but in the end mine was the only one that made it to the front door. I will snap a picture of it tomorrow when I get it out as I start to decorate for Christmas.

This year, I found a mini wreath holder and these mini glass balls at a discount store. I’ve been wanting a wreath holder like this for a bit now. I then took some wire and bent it into a circular shape. I started to string on the balls and just put them on there pretty randomly. I didn’t attempt to make it look uniform. Then I bent the ends of the wire to hook on each other and placed it on the holder.

Now it looks so cute sitting on our fireplace mantel.

I also learned while taking pictures of this project that it’s important to be mindful of what you are wearing when taking pictures of reflective objects. I threw a jacket on over my pajamas really quick after I snapped and previewed the first few pictures.  I refuse to be like the people taking pictures of toasters to sell on eBay with reflections of freaky stuff.

So, I couple of weeks ago I decided I didn’t like the stripes in our powder room. After living with them for a few years, I wondered what the heck I was thinking when I first painted them. So I decided to paint again.

I went out and bought some of that Behr paint with primer mixed in so I could cover the blue with one coat. I sanded down the wall to remove the lines between the stripes.

Turns out the stripes needed more sanding and I didn’t like the almond color I chose for the walls. It was just boring and I so didn’t want to sand again.

After some brainstorming, I came up with the idea to wallpaper. I realize that’s not such a stretch of an idea, but it took me sanding and painting before I thought about it.

So off to the store I went again. I put up the wallpaper and I love the results.

The wallpaper is the color I wanted, but also adds just enough texture to give depth and a bit of character. I took down the ugly birdhouse print and made silhouettes of the girls to hang up.

We removed the sink to make it easier to wallpaper and I had the bright idea to go ahead and trade out the faucet. After a week and several trips to the store for different ceramic glue and epoxy adhesives, the sink went back in to bathroom. I now know that leaving my husband with a pair of pliers, a screwdriver and a stuck drain will result in me needing to fix the sink. In the end, it’s all looking new again and the broken part is hidden under the new drain…lucky for him. I was starting to price pedestal sinks and I really didn’t want to add that cost to this makeover.

While the sink was out of the room, we left in the bolts that help anchor the sink to the wall. They were just sticking out of the holes in the wall. I was very careful to wallpaper around them and all was well. This is until about day 4 and Madison decided she wanted to see what would happen if she pushed on the bolt. We now have a bolt on the floor behind the drywall and I made yet another trip to the store.

I was starting to think that the project that started out as a bit of paint would never end.

The room is not completely finished, but is looking so much better.

I sprayed the light fixture so it’s a brushed nickel instead of the gold color. I plan to do the handle to the toilet next, but I couldn’t figure out how to get it off and I need to nag remind Jon to do it for me.

I also want to add crown molding. I went to the store to look at the options and it was a bit overwhelming. I may need my dad to help with that project. So it’s on the back burner for now.

Finally, I need something else on the wall. The empty space above the toilet is screaming for attention, but I’m not sure what to put there. I want it to look good, but not crowded with the stuff on the other wall.

Here’s a better look at my distressed silhouettes.

Any suggestions on what I should put over the toilet? A shelf?

I’ve been meaning to share these pictures, but never uploaded them. They didn’t turn out great, but you can get the idea from them. I’m loving the new look in the kitchen. It’s so much brighter too!

Before:

After:

I was looking for a rug to go under the table in the kitchen. I saw this one at Anthropologie and figured I could stalk the site until it went on some crazy discount so I could get it. Then I read the reviews. Not for high traffic areas, more of a throw rug, difficult to clean without tearing it up and shows dirt easily was what I got out of the reviews. Too bad. I liked it. Now I’m going to hunt for something that’s pretty and fits into our life. I’m thinking it will take me a bit of time since fitting into our life also means fitting into our budget.

In the morning, I’m taking Madison for her 4 year checkup. She’s getting several shots. I’ll do my best to not cry right along with her.

Then we are going out for ice cream. We won’t care that it’s only 9 am.

After ice cream, we will get comfy on the sofa with a quilt and a stack of library books.

Cuddle days are the best.