Today on the blog: Upcycling lamp parts in a way you might not have thought of.
You know how we find ugly or broken lamps or even just pieces of lamps at the yard sales, estate sales and thrift stores? Well, thrift stores probably throw out the badly broken ones, but sometimes pieces will show up. I’m always watching for these things, but it’s been a minute since I’ve actually upcycled one.
A few months ago I found these little cherubic guys at a sale. Ignore the work space, please and thank you!
I had no idea what their original use was. I thought it was a candle holder and that was what I intended to use it for. Recently, a friend in a Facebook group I’m a member of shared a floor lamp and there were these little guys at the base, holding a tall porcelain lamp! Mystery solved.
When I got home with them, I saw the broken spot, the hole at the base. I don’t know if it’s my old eyes, excitement – or desperation – to find something or just plain ol’ carelessness, but I miss things like this all the time. Do you?
Hmmmm….. What to do? Oh! I’ll use air dry clay to “repair” the hole and paint the whole thing!
But after I went to the trouble of repairing it, I had an epiphany. I realized that the top opening, the spot I thought would hold a candle, was too big for a candle. Remember, it was originally holding a porcelain lamp base/thingy. I really liked the antiqued look of the metal and didn’t much want to paint it and….. hey! I know! It needs reindeer moss! The moss could cover the repair – it could have covered the hole if I’d thought of it earlier and saved me that trouble. But what could they be holding if not a candle? Why, a ball of moss, of course! I found a small, styrofoam sphere in my stash, covered the parts that would be visible with reindeer moss, shoved it down into their hands, sat it on a bed of moss, and called it done.
But it still needed something – okay, okay. I knew I’d do this all along, but the picture above shows most clearly how the moss was attached – so I added a cloche and then called it done. (Why is it that the pictures like the one in the workspace and the one without the cloche are the better pictures, but the one that kinda counts, the one that should be Pinterest, Instagram and blog worthy is never a good/better picture?)
The cloche is from one of those cheap, plastic anniversary clocks, that have a glass dome, that we can sometimes find for a couple of bucks. I toss the clocks and keep the domes. I have several in my arsenal. I have kept the clock faces, but have never used them, so I don’t anymore.
As a side note, the iron base it’s sitting on is also a lamp part. It’s part of a hanging kerosene lamp. And sometime in my yard sale shopping, I happened to find a round piece of glass that fit perfectly. Friends, you have to hit the sales every weekend and go to every one as early as possible!
It’s all part of this vignette at the moment. The chest was from one of my favorite dealers at Angel’s Antique Mall in Opelika, Alabama, who is, devestatingly to me and many others I’m sure, closing her booth. Everything else is from yard and estate sales over the years. The candlesticks, I learned recently, are a Southern Living product. They and the cloche are the youngest things in the vignette. I might, but probably don’t, have as much as $250 total invested in everything here and that includes the $200 chest and the pictures that go on up the wall that you can’t see here.
So go out and keep an open mind with those parts and pieces if you don’t already!
You might want to check out some of my other fun lamp base transformations:
Curbside find – Floor lamp base turned pedestal
Don’t pass up those lamp bases! – Some Lamp Base Crafts
Reindeer Moss on Amazon (Affiliate link. It costs you nothing more and I’ll get a tiny stipend for my work. If you choose to use it, thanks!)
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