Vintage Picture Lamppost

Outdoor lamppost personalized to an indoor picture lamp.

Lampposts are synonymous to old world charm & illuminations. Till today these vintage, tall lamps are synonymous with the beauty & elegance of the cities they illuminate.

Bringing outdoors indoors is always fun. And that’s what we did for the lamp we made for a friend of ours. Basically we converted an outdoor lamppost into an indoor bed-side lamp.

To make the lamp even more special and wedding-gift ready, we gave it a double layer of personalization – first, on the two opposite sides we put in picture stickers of the couple and on the other 2 sides we etched the glass with the initials (in hindi) of the bride and groom.

The quirky-indoor lamppost, with its vintage feel and personalized styling brings in all the charm and hopefully elevates all the romance.  

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!)

A little Wisdom, A little Love

 Personalized hindi alphabet book-ends which double as candle stands.

• A Little Wisdom – flaunt your latest reading trends, against these personalized book-ends!
•  A Little Love – set the mood right, light the candles at night!

Inspired by the book-ends which we earlier made (book-ends for the bride & groom), one of our avid followers liked the design so much, that she asked us to make another similar kind to be given as a wedding gift.

But, this time we added a bit more of multi-purposing to our décor piece.

We designed an elegant personalized book-end as a wedding gift. The initial alphabets (in hindi) of the couple were carved out hollow in the 2 wooden blocks of the book-ends.

For the multi-purposing bit, we made the book-ends double as a candle-holder to infuse more elegance in the product. When lit, the hollow alphabets glow beautifully.

Clip it, Frame it

A clip-board made of a naked frame & a clothes-line: to put up pictures, notes and messages for your loved ones.

clip-board for my wife on our anniversary

I love my office pin-board. It makes life at work so much simpler. With all my to-dos, tasks and notes can just be pinned up, with the information being easily accessible. And once the notes are converted to action, throw them out to make space for new ones. So I thought it would be cool, if I had a similar board at home. Where I can leave love messages for my wife and my wife can write up chores for me to do. Apart from the notes, it could be used as a flash board for putting up pictures and small snippets here and there.

But for my home I wanted to make the pin-board a little less boring than the one I have on my office desk. So I thought of rather making a pin-board, I can make something more like a clip-board; where things could be clipped on and clipped off. So I got a picture frame and removed the outer glass casing of it. I took a regular jute cord and zigzagged it across the back cardboard casing of the picture frame. Made grooves on the edge of the casing so that the cord would stay in place. After all the criss-crossing the picture frame had this naked geometric abstract look.

So after the base of my clip-board was completed all I needed were a few clips to attach the notes & pictures to the so-formed cord mesh. I got these really neat small sized wooden clips which complements the other browns of my frame so very well. Finally my framed clothes-line is ready to be used. Now the only thing required is to put my notes, pictures & snippets.

We can personalize with whatever we want to. Put up messages, write down your shopping list, put pictures – and once bored of them just clip a few new ones!

Book-ends for the Bride & Groom

Alphabets & figures: customized book-ends  made as a wedding gift.

Its December time… and its wedding time! My wife’s very close friend Richa from Dubai recently got married in Delhi to this guy from Australia named Akshit: quite a global get-together I say!

For this special occasion of theirs we wanted to make a really special gift! Knowing that both of them were very fond of reading, we made for them book-ends in a personalized fashion.

We loved their wedding card, which had these cute-little cartoonish figures of the bride & groom. And that became our source of inspiration – to use those figures as a part of our creation.

The wedding card was our inspiration

Now, to make a book-end is a rather simple process. All we need to do is get 4 blocks of wood and join two of them in an L-shape (make 2 of these), so as to make the book rests on the standing block and the sleeping one becomes the base. Once the structure is ready, we can play around to make any design to match any concept and to personalize it the way we want.

We got the bride & groom figures printed on wood and made them stand on either of the book-end -block. In order to give a backdrop, in wood we carved out their name’s 1^st alphabet (A & R) - we did this in the Hindi typography so as to give a more intricate & beautiful design.

The wood blocks were polished a nice dark brown and the alphabets we painted them gold: to give that rich wedding feel and to complement our standing bride & groom. 

Our book-ends turned out to look super cute & creative! With the figures of the bride & groom and with their associated alphabets, it was a double scoop of personalization. The couple totally loved it. And that gave us a double scoop of happiness.

A little personalization goes a long way!

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. 

I&F Lamp

Personalized bed-side mood lighting

Two of my really close friends – Irfan & Fazliyat finally got hitched this year…after an eventful-8 years of ‘hide & seek’.

For the newlyweds, a mood-lighting just around their bed would be perfect for all the oh-so-romantic-nights that would follow.

For their wedding, they had made this really hot logo, having an I-F initial, flanked in the centre with a curvaceous ampersand. I felt a replication of this logo along with diffuse light enhancements would just be perfect to make. So we got the I-F carved out in a wood block, and for the ‘&’ we got it designed cut in a neon-orange acrylic sheet. The I&F stands on a gold-painted wooden box (all the wiring gets neatly tucked inside the box). An LED-strip light pasted to the back gives it the perfect diffused lighting.

The beauty of the whole set comes to life with the textural contrast of the solid wood along with the delicate, transparent acrylic!

My wife had done all the leg-work for this lamp, love her for it; maybe its time to make another mood-lamp…just for her ;)

Congratulations Irfan & Fazliyat for a beautiful life ahead. My advice to a happy marriage: just make sure the 'IF's are kept to a minimal.