Turquoise lamp redo

 I found a lamp for $5 at a thrift store a while back. It was an awful fake gold color. I don't have a pic of that, but I'm sure you all know exactly the color I'm talking about. First order of business: paint it turquoise. I first wanted to make a new lampshade for it, but after three failed attempts, I bagged the lamp idea, so I ripped out the cords. I then had just an empty lamp and the blue was too bright. See above.

 So I sanded the blue. Some of the gold came through. Then I smeared dark brown paint over it to soften up the color.

 A few stems of forsythia and it sits pretty happy in my bathroom by the tub.

Happy redo-ing!
Summer

I hate lamp shades. They are so hard to figure out. What I've concluded about them is to never, ever buy them separately from the lamp. Or to add blue flowers. Which is the mistake that happened here. I had a perfectly good drum lamp shade. Plain, but good. Here's the problem: I always think plain is just not enough. In this case, it should have been. So, after I added the blue flowers, the shade looked a little too wedding-cake-ish. Not going to fly on the lamp. Not at all! So I had to laboriously pull (rip) each fabric flower, (which had been attached very well!), off of the shade. It left horrible pock marks of hot glue all over the shade where the flowers were attached. See here:
Poor lamp shade. It was still very useful, but I just couldn't leave the hot glue unattended. (You never should. Says so right on the hot glue label.)

So, this is how I fixed it. I know-- pretty unoriginal idea to just add ribbon around the edge of the shade, but I already messed it up so badly before that I just couldn't dare to hurt this poor lamp shade any more.

Nice and clean. Much better.