New Watercolor and a Lampshade Tute

I've been practicing my watercolors.

Trying to get LOOSE, as they say.

If you know me, you know I love color.

I have seen all the doves puff up their feathers

trying to stay warm these days,

so I thought I would paint this one.

He's kind of abstract too.

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Lampshade Tutorial

Last year, almost to the day,

I found a tutorial on making

a very cool lampshade.

My Desert Cottage blog

has lots of great things going on.

To link to her lampshade tutorial click here.

I had a lamp given to me recently. 

My DH just did a bit of

rewiring to make it work.

But of course the lampshade was terrible...

plastic and dirty.

So I tore that off of the metal frame

and remembered the tutorial I had found.

Here is what I did.

You can't go wrong making this.

I just used all the things I already had,

old lace, ribbon, twine, yarn,

feathers (you know I love feathers)

keys, cabinet cards, vintage tags, silk flowers,

fabric lace doilies, a vintage wooden clothespin etc.

Here is a close up showing the strips of rusted muslin I used to tie on a key,

and an old wooden clothespin to pin on a cab card.

This key is tied on with twine.

The lace and doilies were bits and pieces from a garage sale.

I just used a hole punch to make holes in the cabinet cards.

You can find old cabinet cards everywhere for about 1 dollar.

This cabinet card is just hanging with a strip of rusted muslin tied to the top of the shade frame.

The vintage 'birthday hat' tag is tied on the top of the shade frame also.

I got some vintage tags from my friend Teresa at Cedar Junction Studio.

Go visit Teresa here to see what all kinds of goodies she has in her Etsy shop.

She is a wonderful collage, assemblage and mixed media artist.

She is making unique and wonderful jewelry now too.

You just never know what you may find at her studio.

The last thing in the tutorial

was putting an old clock face

under the top finial. 

I just happened to have one.

I love the results of this lampshade. 

The new shade looks especially pretty when the lamp light is on.

Savor the Day!

Yvonne