DIY Painted Lamps

I am absolutely loving decorating my very own home. I love owning our home and being able to make it anything we want. Every room is a blank canvas waiting to be transformed. While I have several projects to blog about (the biggest one being our Kitchen renovation), I am excited to share my very own lamps made from bottles!

I first saw these paint swirl vases via Centsational Girl and fell in love with the idea. I knew I wanted to do something similar for our Beach themed Guest Bedroom.

I took some bottles (Roses Mix bottles) because I liked their shape. I washed the bottles out and peeled off the labels. Of course, that awful sticky gunk was left. After doing a little bit of Google research, I came across the tip that peanut butter would remove it without scrubbing. So I slathered a thin layer of peanut butter on the sticky areas, waited ten minutes, and then wiped it off. Perfecto!

I picked out some acrylic paint colors that I liked to match our theme. To paint the vases, simply drop some of each color into the bottle. Slowly turn the vase and let the paint work its way around the inside of the vase. I found that Martha Stewart craft paint is a bit too thick for my liking. I liked Craft Smart and Americana better as they swirled around easier. But, with a little coaxing and some gravity, my bottles were coated. Turn the bottles upside down and let the extra paint drain out.

I loved the finished products! For the first bottle I used Martha Stewart "Pool" and "Pond" and Craft Smart "Turquoise". For the second bottle (my favorite), I used Craft Smart "Turquoise", Martha Stewart "Blue Calico", and Americana "Bleached Sand."

Here are the finished bottles:

Bottle 1

Bottle 2 (My favorite!)

 I was going to leave them at that and just use them as decoration in the guest bedroom. I had a completely  different idea for what kind of lamps I wanted to use, but as I was looking at my finished bottles I recalled a DIY lamp project that I had stumbled across on this blog: The Happy Tulip. I didn't actually pin it because while it was an interesting concept, I did not think I would ever need to make my own lamps... Oh how wrong I was!

I decided that these would look mighty fabulous as lamps in our beach themed room. So off the hubby and I went to Lowes where we found light kits ($8 a piece) and shades ($6 a piece) and some glass drill bits. Then we went to work. Hubby did the actual drilling while I watched a prayed that he would not destroy my beautiful painted bottles. In the end, success! The light kit is really easy to install as the instructions are on the package. The hardest part was threading the cord through the vase. (You could just have the cord come out the bottom of the light kit and skip the drilling step, but we decided that aesthetically, we liked the cord going through the bottle better.

Once we plugged both bottles in  and the lights worked (FIRST TIME! WOOHOO!), I went to work on the shades. I had the idea that I wanted to paint words on the shades. I decided on the paint color I wanted. I went with a very neutral color as I didn't want it to draw attention away from the bottles, but I wanted it to be seen. I took my paint, stencils, paint brush, and tape and sat outside in our few hours of sunshine. (It had been raining for days.)

I decided that I wanted to paint "Sea" on one shade and "Shore" on the other. I took each stencil, one at a time, taped it into place and painted. They turned out so great! Especially once I added the shades on top of the bottle! I can't wait to get the room set up enough so they have a home. 

And that is how I made my own lamps. I love when I start with a project I found on Pinterest and it becomes a completely different (and completely amazing) finished product! 

What do you think of my lamps? What colors do you think would look good together? 

Have an Inspired Day!

Kelsey Noll