The Morning After

So before church this morning, I chose to give my oriental ginger lamp her overdue pedicure.  Here are the before and afters:

                                    Before

                                      Much Better!

I picked up the lamp shade yesterday for $5. Even using tape, I still had to clean up the base because I don't have precision painting skills, but it was an easy fix and it really is a gorgeous lamp. The little bit of black paint that seeped under the tape came off with no problem with a Q-tip and acetone. Here is a shot of the bleeds:

I also recovered one of the graphic lamp shades I purchased new but then didn't like. I had the idea to recover them for the candlestick lamps I picked up a few weeks ago to light my buffet, which I still have to repaint turquoise. My friend Doris suggested I use Mode Podge and it worked really well.  Here they are straight off the truck:

The fabric that I chose is a beachy Tommy Bahama knockoff that doesn't scream pink flamingos or stripped bass. I got it for the incredibly expensive price of 12 cents at a local thrift shop. (It was originally a quarter, but fabric was half off that day. Go me! BTW, I gave them a quarter anyway. It was for charity, silly!)  I like the pastel contrast with all of the dark wood in the dining room:

I think this sexy pair is going to look great on my new turquoise buffet. I am waiting for all of the glue to dry so I can trim the hems with a razor blade. When I turned on the lamp, you could see the uneven hem. Ugly! I will say that this is not a one-dimensional drum shade and it probably took me over an hour to glue it because the bottom of the shade is wider than the top of the shade. I will never intentionally recover a fabric shade with this type of dimension. But like it or not, I have one more to do.

 

I know that everyone wishes brass would go away but it will be back! Mauve, God forbid! The hinges on my dining set are brass and the mirror you see in the background is a true relic. I picked it up about 12 years ago at the Herald's Largest Yard Sale when I didn't even have a wall to hang a mirror on. I moved that baby everywhere I moved. Somethings are a classic and you just know it.

I am no designer but I hate for styles to dictate my home. I have made many mistakes trying to find my own style, particularly being too trendy, but I have learned that just because everyone else is yinging, you can still yang. So you can stop curling your lip at my brass. Before you can say, "in a skinny minute," you will be sitting in a house full of out-of-style brushed nickle wishing you listened to me. Get what you love and learn the art of mixing the classics with contemporary. Trust me, you will be a happier homemaker!