Making It Mine - Vintage Floral Lamp

Making It Mine is about buying a new or vintage item and changing it up to make it mine.

This was my latest project - a lamp base from an antique store.  The sign said "it works" which was good to know, since it was missing some parts.  Just to be sure, I had them try it out with a light bulb before I bought it.

As you can tell, the main thing missing is a lamp shade.

Another thing missing was the knob to turn it on and off.  Luckily it was in the "on" position when they put the bulb in.  Who wants to turn a lamp on and off with needlenose pliers?  Not me.

When I took the lamp to the hardware store to see if they sold knobs that would fit, they told me there was a piece missing from the center, too.  You're not supposed to have just that piece of cardboard.

The hardware store man found a lamp kit, opened it, added the gold center part and put on the knob.  How easy was that?  

I still needed a shade, though.  As you can tell from this picture, it probably originally had a glass globe for a shade, sort of like what goes on a hurricane lamp.

The store didn't have the right globular shape that I needed.  I didn't like the skinny clear ones they had, either.  I liked the looks of this pendant shade, though, so that's what I bought.

 

Here's what it looks like now.  The shade is not the right proportion, but the color is nice.  And that circular band looks a little odd, but so what.  It's definitely not as matchy matchy as it would have been with the original shade.

When I turned the knob, I got a nice surprise: there's a bulb in the base.  So with one click, the base turns on, with two clicks it turns off and the top bulb turns on, and with three clicks you get both.  I like the lamp even more now.

Making It Mine - Pink Vanity Stool

Early this summer at a resale shop, I bought a vintage pink metal stool, perfect for a vanity table.

I liked the color alot, so I left it alone.  It came with a sort of creepy and icky old cushion, which I left behind at the store.  Of course I wanted to make a brand new one myself.

My sewing room has a yellow / orange / pink color scheme.  To go with the retro stool, I chose Lazy Daisy Raspberry from Jeni Baker's Dreamin' Vintage collection.   And because I like sparkle, I used this little bit of trim from my trim stash.

I used a piece of foam I had laying around in the basement, and made a pillowcase cover that I hand-stitched shut on one short end.  

I hand-stitched the trim on, as well.  I used a backstitch to give one continuous line of stitching.

I have it sitting with a vintage vanity table that I bought at a garage sale early this spring.  I'm liking brass this year, and the brass-legged, mirrored, formaica vanity table struck my fancy.  First came the table, then the stool.

I bought the table to be a plant stand on my deck.  And it lived out there with my bird cage for over a month.  But it was so pretty and I felt bad that it was getting so beat up in the rain, so I brought it inside into my sewing room.  Kind of an unusual thing to have in a sewing room, but I think the pair of them are pretty, so that makes them welcome. And the airy, curvy legs don't take up much visual weight in the room.

This stool and my ironing board cover were the last two little projects that were hanging over my head.  Now I have a clean slate and I'm excited to plan some new projects.

Making it Mine - Little Yellow Dresser

Last week I showed you a cupboard I converted into something more my style.  This week I finished doing something similar with a little dresser.

This is how it looked when I bought it many years ago at a botanical garden gift shop.  I eventually got tired of the pastel colors and cottage-y look, so I made it live in a box in the basement for the last few years.  I tried to give it away last month, but no luck, so I decided to keep it and use up more of my yellow spray paint.

This is how it looks after making it mine.  It's a little thing, 8" tall, 6" wide, and 3" deep.  The knobs are glued in, darn it, so I had to leave them alone.

Once again, I tried to dial back a little on all that yellow.  I had wooden buttons the same shape as the flowers on the Washi tape.  At first I put vertical strips of Washi tape on the middle drawer, and four buttons on each drawer.  Too much, so I pulled all that off and got out lots of plastic buttons and pretty much covered the front of each drawer with a different color.  Again, too much.  

Back to Plan A, edited a bit.  With less on the front, I was able to get away with adding some paper on top.  It's pretty much the same yellow, but with a modern white chevron to lighten it up a bit.

When I added the trim to the top, I felt very carpenter-ish doing so.  I used a tiny little saw and jig to hold the wood straight so I could get perfect 90-degree angles.  Then I was very patient as I put on two coats of paint and gradually glued the sides separately from the front and back.

The interior of the drawers remains as it was when I bought the dresser.  Not a perfect match to the Washi tape, but close enough.  And it's nice to have that little bit of history.

Making it Mine - Little Yellow Cupboard

I bought a small wooden cupboard last month at a charity resale event.  This week I decided to give it a redo and make it mine.
 

This is what it looked like when I bought it.  Nice, but not really my style.  

Some things you don't notice right away.  Like those roses, for example.  It turns out they are somewhat dimensional and hard to cover with paint.  A spray of white didn't help; neither did a coat of yellow.  My husband dug out a can of white Zinsser primer/blocker and that covered the original paint job, but the dimensionality of the roses was still showing.

I decided to cover the roses with more wood, and trim it out.  A little trip to the hardware store netted me just what I needed, including more yellow paint.

Well, after spraying the heck out of the poor little cupboard, the raised areas of the roses didn't look a whole lot different than some of the runny areas and other gorp I managed to introduce.  I decided to just let it be.

(I'm using the trim on another makeover project, and the flat little boards will just go into the wood department of our basement until somebody finds a use for them.)

Here it is after making it mine.

My original plan was just to paint it yellow and add a different knob.  But it sure was bright yellow!  

The only reason I picked this color was because I wanted to use spray paint to avoid brush strokes, and I had a can of it leftover from a few years ago.  

To tone down some of the yellow, I covered the front panel with two kinds of Washi tape.  This works so much better than ribbon.  It's a little pricey, but if you buy a few rolls now and then, it's not too bad.

The knob looks peach when viewed head on.  It's really pink, but the yellow of the cabinet makes it look peachy.

Like I said, it's pink.

To go with the pink knob, I lined the shelves with pink paper.

The cupboard is 16" tall, 10" wide, and 6" deep.  I haven't yet decided which room it will go in, or what it will hold.  But I'm sure it will make the rounds over the coming years.  

Making It Mine - Rotary Cutter Holder

In the Making It Mine series, I take something I bought and put my own spin on it.

So far I showed you

• retro lamp
• bird cage
• little blue cabinet
• chair
• cabinet knobs

Today is the simplest one yet.

I bought this at a resale shop a few years ago.  It seemed like it would be useful for something, but it wasn't too sturdy.

I painted it white, tried different things on it, tried to throw it out, left it in the basement for a long time, then recently hung my rotary cutters on it.  

It works good for this, so it can relax and not worry about me trying to get rid of it any longer.

Making It Mine - Knobs

Making It Mine is a series where I show an item I bought, then changed in order to make it more to my liking.

Five years ago I bought this small dresser with the knobs you see in the front.  They were fine for awhile.  Seems like everything is fine for awhile.  But after a few months, I made new knobs.

Here it is with the new knobs I made.  Basically, I glued beads, buttons, ribbons, and trim on a plain white knob.  Between the drawer front and the knob is either a small piece of fabric or paper.

Heart buttons; fabric background.

Both beads and buttons.  The background is paper, now faded from what used to be bright yellow.  I should replace it.

See that teardrop-shaped, gold-rimmed bead on the right?  That's the same kind that I used as the umbrella tip on my R is for Rain quilt.

 

Two buttons, furry trim, paper backing.  Again - I should swap out that faded paper.

The house button is also on R is for Rain.  I had forgotten it was on this knob.

Here you have a clear view of the white knob that is the base on which all the gorp is glued.  This has just two buttons - the large pink flower, with an orange/pink one glued over the button holes.

Kaffe Fassett scrap in the background.

Two buttons - orange square and a cute sand pail.  Trim circles the white knob, backed by fabric that has no intention of fading.  Ever.

Three buttons, nice and simple.  That paper used to be lime green.  

 

From this view, you can see more of the trim - sometimes I wrapped it on the shank of the knob; sometimes I glued it along the edges.