Oh there were so many blog posts planned for the weekend….then the flu came……and the flu stole  many many days from me……..but, I am a brave girl and I will carry on….and I will START with this one! Many more to come…

In honor of being asked to be a judge for the upcoming contest sponsored by PLAID, where you get to trick out a pumpkin in pretty much whatever way your beautiful mind wants to do it…..I decided to repurpose some kind of pumkin-y thing to announce the whole shindig to you…..so what I did…is I repurposed a lamp that has been sitting in my garage. I saved this lampshade because I loved the shape….I saved it even though I accidentally put a candle underneath it, which burned a hole in it….(I am not so fabulous at safety……) I still have to figure out what to do with that hole….but, I’m pretty happy with how the lamp turned out. I still want to add some trim, and I’m thinking I might just do a little vignette of three lamps of different heights, but I will show you how I did this one to start………When we are done…make sure you check out THE CONTEST…

Ok, So like I said, I had this lampshade in my garage….along with a bunch of other lamps and lampshades, and a whole bunch of other stuff….yeh, I save too much stuff because I like to think someday I will do something like this with it…….

then I drew a happy Jack face on it….I’m not much of a scary Halloween person…….scary stuff freaks me out a little…so you will always find my Halloween decor to be jolly, jovial, fun and happy………but, you can make a scary mean face on yours if you want to….I’m not the boss of you.

You can see that my lampshade is kinda dirty in spots…that’s where I am going to glue some trim as soon as I make it into town. (that’s what you say when you live out in the country and you are going to go to the store….”I am going to town….”)

Well, as pretty much everyone knows, I love PLAID because I love Mod Podge more than just about anything, and I also love Folk Art paint…it is so thick and wonderful and coats everything so perfectly…….it’s not cheap and runny. I chose this orange….called Glazed Carrots. It’s yummy for home decor stuff, it’s not too bright and it has kind of a coral-ish orange cast.

So, then I just started painting. My suggestion  here is that you use a brush that holds a lot of paint and has a nice crisp blunt edge so you can get a good straight line.

I just kept painting and painting and painting….

and then I was done! So….I headed out to the garage to find just the right lamp….and there it was….a black lamp with a distressed ivory piece to it….PERFECT! Good thing I saved it! Good thing I had my husband move it AGAIN each time we have moved in the last 5 years….he will be so thrilled!

I love how it turned out. I like how it looks NOT lit, and I LOOOOOVE how it looks when it is lit. You can see that if the paint is thicker in some spots, it’s not quite as transparent….but i love the way it looks when it’s lit, even if it seems blotchy-ish….it just looks super cool and artsy. I really am going to make a set of 3….can’t wait to show you!

xoxo

melody