Let there be light!

Today's post is an upcycle rather than a refashion (all refashions are upcycles, but not all upcycles are refashions...). When we lived in our last house, our bedroom was plum with teal accents. We bought a couple of nice bedside lamps from Asda (I think) and they looked great.

Pretty colour!

When we moved house though, they looked not so great. Our bedroom here is magnolia with a beachy theme, and the teal really didn't work. I kept meaning to buy new ones, but it seemed a shame to as the ones we already had still worked just fine. Light bulb moment! (Ha ha...) Why don't I just upcycle them? (I must admit the lightbulb wasn't completely mine, I got the inspiration from my lovely friend Jen who also upcycled old lamps!)

The shades had to go. I thought about covering them, but the teal would have shone through as soon as the lamp was turned on. The bases I decided to spray paint. I started by applying masking tape to the bits I didn't want to change (this is a must, it makes the whole thing look so much more professional!). Then I primed with a white spray primer, to make sure that the paint stuck to the shiny ceramic base.

Teal begone!

Next, I applied a couple of coats of Plastikote stone effect spray in Soapstone, which is a nice pale grey with bluey grey spots and a nice gritty texture (see where I'm going with this?).

Looks like a beach pebble, right?

Then, after waiting overnight so that the paint had properly hardened (very important - think nail polish) I added a couple of coats of clear matt sealer.

Ready for a hat!

I took a trip to the local B&M Home Stores (love that place - who knew you could fit so much useful tat under one roof?) and found a couple of small grey lampshades for 99p each (bargain!). Put 'em together and what have you got?

You got lovely beachy bedside lamps, that's what! Feel free to admire the campervan coaster and ignore the very uncoordinated alarm clock. There's not much colour in the photo, but rest assured there's lots of shades of blue and a few shades of red in this room too. I'm very happy with how this turned out, I was a little worried I'd mess it up and end up having to buy totally new lamps, but it turns out I'm better at upcycling than I thought! Always nice.