A quick facelift to tired old lamps . . .

Again, I didn't get before pictures of this project.  I bought this pair of lamps off Kijiji for real cheap.  The bases were shiny gold with the middle section being a beige-cream ceramic with flowers painted on it.  The cream coloured lamp shades were those pleated type and still had the plastic on them so I figured I'd just be able to tear off the plastic and be good to go.  Nope.  They were so old the pleated fabric fell off in places when I tore off the plastic.  So, I tore the rest of the fabric off and cleaned them up best I could then spray painted one of the them white to see how that would look.  Not so pretty and took too much spray paint.  So, I mixed up Chalk-Tique (see other posts for details on this) with Benjamin Moore Bath & Spa paint in the color Masada and using my Wooster Red Feather roller, I rolled on 2 or three coats inside and outside the whole lampshade.  Then, after a day of curing, I gave them a couple coats of clear coat spray.

Then, using a stencil with spray adhesive and a stipple brush, I stippled some leftover wall paint in the color Revere Pewter and created a beautiful pattern on the shades!  This was my first time using spray adhesive and stippling and it was fun and turned out awesome!

Finally, I used gray grosgrain ribbon from Dollarama and hot glued it around the top & bottom edges.

I spray painted the bases black.

The cons to this makeover?  Hot glueing ribbon creates unwanted 'bumps' that are not pretty at all.  I may just get more Dollarama ribbon and gather it on a sewing machine and glue that on the edges (with crazy glue) to cover the 'bumps'.  Lastly, you can tell the lampshades were painted when the lamps are turned on.  I read that so that was no surprise.  However, the stencilled pattern helps draw the eye away from that fact.