Several weeks ago I wrote a post about making fruit smoothies, and mentioned that one of the ingredients was Earth Fare's Organic Apple Juice. The container that the apple juice came in was a 1-gallon glass jug. After using up all of the juice, I thought that the bottle was too neat to recycle, so I started brainstorming on what I could possibly do with the bottle. After thinking for a bit, it hit me... I wanted to make a lamp with the jug!
Having never made a lamp before, I was not really sure where to begin. I am an avid follower of Grace Bonney's Design Sponge blog (
http://www.designsponge.com/), and since she is always giving great design and creative advice, I decided to contact her via Twitter (@designsponge) for suggestions of where to purchase the necessary tools to achieve this lamp making pursuit of mine.
She suggested that I purchase a super-easy lamp making kit from Amazon.com... and so I did! My total checkout price for the kit was less than $25 buckaroos (with the harp purchase included), so I was pretty pumped with how inexpensive the purchase ended up being for me.
The kit came in the mail in less than three days, so I immediately began crafting my lamp!
Part 1: I wanted to remove the product logo from the jug in order to have a clean look to the lamp. So really part 1 of the whole process was just documenting the fact that the logo was there... and then it was about to hit the road haha
Part 2: In order to remove the logo from the jug, I soaked the bottle in soapy hot water. After letting the jug sit in the water for about five minutes, I used a razor blade to scratch off the logo. This process was relatively easy. I soaked the bottle for a little while longer, and then made one last scratching run around the bottle with the razor blade to make sure that there was no left over sticky stuff.
The lamp making kit accessories and harp were neatly packaged, and the directions were somewhat understandable... lets just say some sailor-mouth language was used between myself and the kit accessories when trying to get it all together...
Part 3: Relishing in the fact that I had a nice clean jug with no logo on it!
Part 4: After piecing all of the lamp kit items together, and securing the kit accessories into the jug, the moment of truth had arrived. Had I successfully wired the neutral wire to the silver screw, and the other wire to the brass screw? Would electricity flow through the wires and make the light bulb work? I was not really sure, but I was about to find out...
Part 5: HALLELUJAH (Angels and a chorus singing in the background)! After plugging the chord into the wall for the first time, the light immediately turned on. To say that I was excited about actually making a freaking lamp all by myself is a MAJOR understatement! I was so happy!! All in all, the process of putting the kit pieces together, and wiring the chords to the necessary connections was pretty easy. If I could do it, anyone can do it!
The lampshade in the above photo is one that I just took off from one of the lamps in our house, so I still need to go out and purchase one for this lamp. After testing this shade out with the lamp, I am thinking that I will stick with a shade that has some sort of texture.
So cheers to achieving one of my creative pursuits!!
Following my pursuits,
Price
Special thanks to:
