DIY : Our Polka Dotted bed-side lamp!

The last Saturday in March, we had nothing on. So I created something to do. :P It's been on my mind for many many months. There's an Ikea picture frame on our Picture-Feature wall in dining area, painted white but the paint has turned yellow over the months. I dislike yellowy-white... sad to say the same paint was over ALL our doors, door frames and staircase.... yes in future I plan to do a complete make over by repainting our doors, door frames & staircase with an awesome bright white paint. Joshua is not in favour of this project, but we shall see!!! Hmmmphhh!!!

Anyway the best I could do at the moment is just to transform that tiny frame from yellowy-white to normal white. I bought a spray white, for about RM12, from hardware shop nearby. Took the frame out to the backyard and start spraying away. 

There's another project I've had in mind for a while which will involve spray painting white too... I thought... why not do all the spray paint today??? Oh yeahhhhhh.... 

Here's our bed-side table lamp. Yes awful maroon. :( I wasn't really disturbed by the colour initially. 

What spurred me to do something about this lamp is the zig zag lamp shade. As you can see there are numerous dents for dust to accumulate and it is impossible to clean all the dust out. I tried running it under the water tap and put out to sun... yet the stubborn dust would be there... it's not obvious in this picture but when you look up close, you will feel unhealthy if you're perfectionist or a freak like me. :P 

So, I googled on how to change or re-make lamp shade. After much thoughts, I decided that I will try to stick fabric over the shade to create a clean flat surface for easy cleaning and take this opportunity to give it a complete make over. SPRAY PAINT THE BODY WHITE!!

So here, I wrapped the parts that's not supposed to be painted with scotch tape and plastic bags.. and just spray it on.

I finished up a can while I was doing the second lamp so we went out to get a second can. It's different brand and gave a different finish, more matte... but I didn't really care about the consistency anymore.

I have not mastered the skill to evenly spray the paint over... it requires spraying from certain angle and keep on moving left to right or up to down... so if you see up close, you will find marks of excess paint dripped down.. :P

Thank God Joshua and Anne was taking care of Jasmine when I was so into my own DIY world. Hehe.

So I wrapped up the weekend with 2 spray-painted lamps. The shades are still untouched. I had plans to use leftover fabric from our sofa cushion covers for it. That will be a dark grey.... or buy nice fabric from Ikea, but the chevron pattern was never part of their category. :(  I started to look up on the remnants I keep from old clothes or other DIY fabric remnants.. and saw this top.

It was one of my ebay UK purchase which Joshua's brother took back for me somewhere in 2011 or 2012. Bad news was when he cut the parcel open, he accidentally cut a big hole on the blouse. :(
Good news was the blouse didn't really fitted me well. The neckline was too loose for me and generally this blouse will most likely be a pregnancy blouse. Haha.

So.. one weekend in April when Jasmine was asleep in her baby cot, I started unpicking the whole blouse.
I really like the polka dot pattern and thought if I can't wear them, I can style it on my bed-side lamps.
I was hoping the whole blouse will be sufficient for 2 lamp shades. :D

On the Sunday, we bought a fabric glue from Mr DIY in summit after church. At night after Jasmine successfully goes into dreamland, I used a cooking wine bottle to hold up the lamp shades and just cut the fabric to fit the shade, started glue-ing it onto the shade. It's not perfectly glued on but it's good enough from the previous maroon lamp!

I ended up having lots of glue on my fingers but washing with soap helped clean most of them out. :D

So happy with our new bed-side lamp!!! :D Such a drastic improvement from before!!

The best part : these lamps were given to us by Aunty Patricia my mum's friend when she moved from Muar to PJ. And in Muar these lamps were not used, I took them when we stay in USJ. They followed us to Subang 71... and finally was transformed. 

The price tag was still on the switch until now. It was RM2.50 only??? From The Store Muar. That's most likely from the 1990s. Wah sey... so cheappp back then?? 

How we wish there's no such thing as inflation right? :(   Now RM25 also not enough to buy a decent lamp... because I did a whole research on buying brand new lamps before deciding to try my hands on this DIY.  So glad this DIY turned out well! :D