Friday, September 9, 2011

Personalized Lamp

My first DIY tutorial!
I originally fell in love with these lamps from Pottery Barn, but at 200 bucks a piece there was no way one of those lamps was ever going to make it into my living room.

via Pottery Barn
Thankfully, there is such a thing as knock offs. I was on a mission to find a similar lamp for far less money. During one of my many trips to Home Goods, I found a similar lamp for only 40 dollars. I fell in love, brought it home and was slightly disappointed.



It was boring and needed a touch of my own personal style. To do so, I stencilled the lampshade with a very simple image to give it "personality".


The end result...much better! This was a very simple project. Unfortunately, when I personalized my lampshade I was only contemplating making this blog, so I did not take a ton of great pictures for a tutorial. I chose No. 619 because it has a personal meaning to my husband and I. June 19th (06/19) is our wedding day.

The how to:
-Using Word, I chose a font and size I liked.
-Next, I printed the image onto regular printer paper.
-Take freezer paper and lay it over your print (shiny side against your print).
-Tape the two papers together and using a craft knife cut your letters out to make a stencil.
-Once your stencil is cut out, the freezer paper can be temporarily adhered to your canvas or lampshade with an iron.


-I used stencil paint and a stencil paint brush. Using a dabbing or blotting motion to allow your paint to cover through the texture of the fabric.
-Once completely filled in just remove your stencil and show off your new artwork. 


Freezer paper only works when using words or numbers, not images. I like to use this method because it is cheap and I have the supplies lying around. If you are wanting to add your own image to something there are also many ways to transfer images. Beth, from Home Stories A 2 Z, who is an amazing blogger (this is one of the blogs I regularly follow and was part of the inspiration for me to create my own blog), did a post on different ways to transfer images. Home Stories A 2 Z

I have also linked up to Whipperberry

 

3 comments:

  1. Nice job on the lamp Angela - it's beautiful and I appreciate your sense of style!!

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  2. really like the shade! something I actually think I can do to update my lamps. thanks for the idea!

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  3. Just discovered your blog after reading about you on @Thursdays. REALLY loving it! Great idea to use stencil and paint to customize work.

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