The Lamp for Happily Ever After…

Personalized wedding gift: a wooden bed-side lamp designed from the wedding logo of the groom & bride (K & B)

The wedding day, is one of the most, if not the most special day in a couples’ life. But along with the endless joy, festivities and love, comes the wrath of the dreadful gifts.

Wedding gifts seriously need some evolution; we definitely need to think beyond the couples’ watch, the crystal vase and the money tokens.

Best way to show your love for your loved ones on their wedding day is to get something that extra special, something that extra personalized, something that is meant only for the bride and groom, which they will cherish forever.

Come-in the personalized lamp, with the initials of the bride & groom. Or if they have ‘an initials wedding logo’, then brilliantly that can be converted into a wonderful bed-side lamp.

 

the wedding logo - our inspiration

 

For one of our dear friends, we did the same. With the reference of the logo off the wedding card, we designed a wooden lamp of the same design. The bride & groom had the initials K & B, and let me say the logo was beautiful in itself: with the K & B merging in such a way, so as to create a rotated heart shape! Quite nice I say.

So the first step was to enlarge the logo and get it cut in a thick 1” wood block. Then we natural polished it (in order to maintain the goodness of woodness of it). Next, we pasted the LED lights all through the internal lines of the logo. So when you light it, the logo would sort of glow from within.

In order to add some spunk to the all wood lamp, we painted the internal edges along with the LED strip a bright orange. And finally the logo was mounted on a gold-painted wooden stand.

And thats how we wrapped it up

The wood polish along with the orange and gold colors, work seamlessly well. And to that, add the glow of the light! We think that our personalized initials lamp exudes warmth & hotness.
And hopefully will bring a long broad smile on Mr. & Mrs. K. & B. (Congratulations guys!)

Picture Lamp: Hexagons-in-Law

Brass, glass, pictured & personalized hexagonal lamp.

My in-laws were re-furbishing their house in Mumbai, so lots of so called old home scrap was bestowed upon me. One thing I particularly loved was this pair of hexagonal-brass pendant light. They were simple and beautiful and blackened too. So my thought was to give them back

something made from their old stuff, give it a twist and gift it back to them, with the added wowness, of course.

We dismantled the pendant light, decided to just use the hexagonal bulb casing and make it as a table lamp. First thing to do was to make the metal nice and shiny; good old ‘brasso’ to the rescue. So from black, the metal polished into a nice dark, rustic, goldenish hue.

In order to make it personal, we took 3 of my in-laws lovely pictures, sized them to fit the glass panels of the lamp, did some photoshop enhancements and muted the colors to sepia mode. These pictures were printed on transparent sticker papers and glued on the glass panels. The idea was to have alternate panels having pictures. All six sides bearing pictures would have become a little too chaotic I feel. So on the other set of alternate panels, we put hexagonal see-through designs. The alternate picture & only design panels just gave a really nice balance to the whole look.

As for the bulb-fitting, we made a wooden base, cut to the same shape & size as the hexagonal base. Put a diffused bulb in the center of the wooden base, and wired it up.

The lamp was ready and good to be wrapped and gifted. It looked quite elegant and especially with the lights on: the hexagonal-design shadows flickering on the wall and my in-laws pictures glowing from behind. Together it all gave wonderful and subtle feelings of warmth and beauty.

Gladly, my in-laws loved their gift. Especially they were really fascinated with the transformation of their own old lamp into a new avatar all together.

As they always say – “Old is gold”; rather “Old is brass” in this case at least. 

The Industrial Illumination

An unused & rusted machine, processed into a funky industrial lamp

The Industrial Revolution in the 18^th century, transformed human lives as it helped transition hand production methods to machinery manufacturing. Till today, we reap the fruits of those years, when great men achieved great feats.

Taking a leaf out of this important phase of history, we decided to create an industrial decor revolution of our own.

An unused, rusted, hand operated bottle capping machine became our source of inspiration. The machine in itself had this super funky look – with a turn-wheel at top, exposed gears and solid iron fixtures.

We added two bulbs facing each other – lower one on the base where the erstwhile bottles would stand and a hanging bulb suspended from top where the capping mechanism would take place. Then all we were left with was to wire up the bulb connections to one single plug. And our industrialization process was done.

Switch on the bulbs and we get a quirky industrial illumination of our own.

As they say – “history always repeats itself!”

To infuse some industrial elements in our homes is a rather easy task. Use old home machines like a mixer or sewing machine or an old camera and give it a paint job or simply just add a bulb to it. An eye-catching décor element is all ready.

The Scribble Lamp

Metal wires randomly bent to make a whimsical lamp

The first thing we learnt when we were given a pencil in our hands was not to write… but to scribble. Don’t we all still love scribbling? Just pen and paper and our whimsical thoughts – with these 3 elements, we have all drawn many a master-piece. There are actual psychology tests, in which your state of mind is determined through the scribbling you do! Brilliant, right?

Why restrict scribbling to pen & paper. Thus, we decided to scribble up a decor lamp. All we require is a few meters of thin metal wire that can be easily bent with pliers. To start the scribbling process with the wire, simply keep on bending the wire at random intervals and in random directions. No kind of uniformity is required. It is literally like scribbling.

After the entire wire has been randomly bent, we will have a haphazard mass of wire. To give it a little structure, fluff the wire together and twine it up with thin wires. The eventual structure need not be well defined; it can be completely whimsical. Finally a bulb-cord is suspended in the middle of the wires.

This DIY actually had a de-stressing kind of effect. I wonder what our scribbling has to say about our state of mind?

Up-Cage

Lit up and lamped up bird cage with silver leaf veil creeping around.

Freedom is such a universal & beautiful aspect of life. We all have it and that’s why we all take it for granted. No one likes enclosures. Put any one of us in a room with nothing but four plain walls – in minutes, not even hours we would be struggling to get ourselves freed. 

A bird cage in itself is a symbol of captivity and being non-free. But we prefer to open its gate and rather up-cycle it and use it as a beautiful pendant light fixture. As a décor element a bird cage can be used magically in any space. Its arching shape and its wired structure are beautiful on its own.

So in our own quirky way, we started our up-cycle (rather up-cage) process. We decided to envelope the cage with creeping leaf veils. We got decorative leaves and painted them all silver – so that the leaves looked as if they were an extension of the cage itself. We twined the silver leaves along with little white flowers, all around the cage.

Next, we then enveloped a streamer of golden small bulbs all around the cage and over the leaf veils. Fixing the light streamer at regular intervals with silver threads. Lastly, we attached a silver chain on to the top of the cage, which would help suspend the lit-up bird cage from the ceiling.

Light-off or light-one: the hanging bird cage with the silver-leaf veil looks very mesmerizing. Apart from being hanged, the bird cage can also be put atop a table. It will still mesmerize the same way.

 Freedom never looked or felt this beautiful!

Light streamers are the simplest way to liven up any room. Twirl it around or hang it about any space- it will create a beautiful look. Also, they are available in all colors. They can be used extensively  for festive decorations too.

F-light of Cranes

Colorful origami cranes suspended from a lit-up wooden bark - to bring us eternal good luck! 

Origami as an art is so creatively versatile. With mere paper such awesome figures can be made. I have always been fascinated by it. So in our next project we tried to put our origami skills to test.

We decided to make origami cranes. As per Japanese legend it is said that anyone who folds a 1000 origami cranes, will be granted eternal good luck. Fascinating! So in our pursuit for good luck we started folding square papers to make our 1000 cranes. We used different colored sheets to make our flock of cranes look as colorful as possible.

To make our origami cranes, we took tutorials from YouTube: it has become such a universal teacher I say. The crane is pretty simple to make – just a few folds here and a few folds there and your paper-folded crane is ready!

After our colorful cranes were ready, we wanted to place them in such a way as if they were in flight. So we hanged each crane from a thick wooden bark with a transparent plastic wire, all at varying heights.

To make the entire look more dramatic, we wound light-streamers to the wooden bark.

In the day the colors of the flying cranes looks so vibrant & joyous and by night with the lights turned on, the shadows of the cranes peacefully dance away.

Though we did not end up making 1000 cranes, but we still hope that the eternal good luck still comes our way! Amen.

Origami made paper objects can be used very widely to enhance our home décor. They are quick to make, inexpensive and give or homes a creative flair.

The Clinking Chandelier

Glass bottles and golden ribbons make a clinking glass chandelier.

Glass, gold & light – these are 3 elements which can definitely up any house to give it a rich & glamorous feel. And in our next project we decided to take all three of them together. Time to exude exuberance.

Our starting point was whole lot of these mini-sized perfume bottles, which had abstract floral golden motifs on them. So golden became our obvious choice to supplement the bottles. The idea was simple: to bunch up the bottles together in random fashion, so that when they are slightly touched, they make this rippling-clinking noise effect. Music to the ears I tell you. And through the glass-bunch pass a hanging bulb, that would help give a shimmery reflect.

We used golden ribbons to tie the bottles at their neck and a holed utensil lid was used as our support a   suspender, from which the bottles would hang. The idea was just to randomly tie the bottles at varying     heights, so as to fill the bulk, yet let the bottles be freely inter-spaced.  
                                                    

Once all the bottles were tied, we suspended a light fixture from the center hole. And we were done!

The chandelier was such a quick work, as it just required tying the bottles and hanging them up. And the results are definitely quite richly dramatic.

In dark nights, the glimmer will cast. And with blowing winds, the clinking will last.

Tying and hanging is the easiest craft exercise to undertake. You basically require 3 elements totally – 1. A supporting body on top, 2. A suspender (rope/ribbon) and 3. Quirky elements that could be tied & hanged. A kid’s gym or a suspended fish-tank; the possibilities and themes to make are endless. 

Steel Roses

A shimmering lamp-shade made from steel wool scrubbers.

Twinkle, shine, sparkle, shimmer, glitter, and glimmer – let’s make our homes a little more brighter!

Steel wool scrubber – it is such an exciting element. Yes seriously! Whenever I see them they remind me of blooming, shiny-grey fantasy roses! Sans the delicate fragrance, of course.

So to make a lamp out of it was an idea, which has been tickling me since when. The first thing was to go shop for a few of these scrubbers.  The shop-keeper wondered what we needed so many scrubbers for. How many utensils he presumed we had to wash?

To tie up the scrubbers in a concentric fashion was our starting point to make the lamp. One scrubber in the center, attached to five petalling scrubbers around it. Followed by another couple of rounds. Each scrubber needed to be attached to each side of the adjacent scrubbers. 

Our canopy of the steel wool was thus ready. Now, the shape that we form can be as per our liking. We can either make a complete round ball-like structure or keep it like a half-opened-umbrella structure. I preferred the latter. In order to make the structure more defined; we inter-spaced thin yet strong metal wires around the circular layers of the structure. Thus, we get defined shape and solidarity.

The next step was to attach our steel canopy to a hanging light-bulb fixture (the one we used is from Ikea – they are inexpensive and easily available locally too). Lastly, it is time to hang this quirky steel-wool DIY lamp in our house – over the dining table or in a conspicuous corner.

From a lousy utensil cleaner to a definite head-turner: this journey seems quite transformational.

Twinkle, shine, sparkle, shimmer, glitter, and glimmer – our homes are now very much more brighter!

Just like clothes-fashion, where a little bit of bling can transform your entire look – so is the case with our homes. Add bling in appropriate doses to make your home stand out. Bling on cushions, lamps, photo-frames, all will make your home more glamorous and eye-catchy. One caution – not to overdo it!