From wine...to lamp? (DIY)

I love lamps.  Anyone who's ever been in my house knows how much I prefer mood lighting over glaring overheads lights.  May place may have been described as a cave from time to time.  It also doesn't help that every apartment I've lived in has had those horridly tacky fluorescent overhead lights.  Seriously, who decided those were a good idea.  The only thing I do not love about lamps are the price.  Although you can generally find a nice lamp for under $100, I'm in law school.  There are a billion other things I'd rather buy with $100 than lamps- like shoes or fabric.

So this Sunday I set out to break the expensive lamp habit (and avoid doing the 50 pages of Constitutional law reading I needed to finish.  30 minutes and approximately $30 later I'd succeeded.

Love it! and the new cabinet I scored off Craiglist this weekend.

Interested?  Here's the Full How To

From Wine to Lamp

Materials:

• Empty 1.5 liter wine bottle (You could use a smaller bottle, but you'd also need a smaller lampshade.)
• 7" lampshade- $10 at Target.
• Lamp kit- $10, available at any home improvment store.  Make sure you pick a lamp kit with a "bottle nipple."  This stabilizes the lamp fixture on the bottle.
• 50' of twine- $5, available at any home improvement store.  I recommend looking for twine with interesting color variations.

Tools:

• Glue gun and glue sticks
• Screwdriver
• Scissors.

Instructions:

• Following the super easy instructions on the lamp kit, assemble the lamp fixture and place it on top of the wine bottle.  Do not be intimated by this part.  I am certainly not any sort of electrical guru and managed to assemble the kit, by myself, in less than 5 minutes. 

• Tape the lamp cord down the length of the wine bottle.  This enables you to cover the lamp cord with the twine so that it's not hanging down the back of the lamp.  

• Hot glue a small section of the twine to the base of the bottle.  Glue the twine down ever 2" until you're back to the beginning and glue again to complete the first circle.

•  Making sure the twine is taught, begin to wrap the bottle, gluing each time you complete a circle.  When you reach the part of the bottle that begins to narrow you'll need to use more hot glue.  I went back to the 2" gluing distances just to make sure there wasn't an slipping.

• One you reach the top of the bottle cut the excess twine and secure with hot glue.  Place the lampshade onto of the bulb and enjoy!

Sit back and enjoy the lovely, non fluorescent, light from your under $30 lamp.  Take that Pottery Barn!

Until next time!