Angela Decorates: Repurposed Shabby Chic Lamp

As I am getting closer and closer to finishing my craftroom, I realized I needed a little bit of additional lighting on my desk. So I decided to make this a quick craft project. I have recently been inspired by a fabulous local store called The Turqoise Door as well as my adventures to the Junk Gypsy store and flea markets in Round Top, Tx last weekend. So I decided I wanted a casual, shabby, repurposed look for this table lamp. Here are some of the supplies I used:

I already had a lamp base with some broken and missing crystals sitting around that I thought would work great for my shabby look. I found this lampshade frame at The Turqouise Door, and I bought some additional magnetic crystals from Hobby Lobby.

Now, the first step was to paint the lamp a brighter shade of gold to match, if you will remember, the frames to my Barbie paintings. I applied the paint normally, but this time I did not remove any excess.

Here's how it looked after the paint job:

Next, I added the lampshade. Because it didn't exactly fit, I secured it in place with zip ties and painted the zip ties gold and screwed on the finial which I had also painted gold.

Then it was just a matter of embellishing the lampshade with the additional magnetic crystals, flowers and pins, corsages my daughters wore to a daddy/daughter dance a few years ago, a couple of old family photos and a special card from a friend that I received shortly after starting my blog. I used alligator clips and clothespins to attach the embellishments to the frame. So while it's a lampshade, it's also kind of like a bulletin board of mementos.