My painted lamp (a Diddle Dumpling first!)

Have you ever spotted something in a thrift store, be it an item of clothing, accessory, decor item or piece of furniture and thought, "Hm.  Not bad.  But it could be BETTER!"  That's what this lamp had me thinking. 

 

Gourd table lamps seem to be all the rage lately, and while I didn't feel a burning desire to hunt down and purchase a gourd-shaped lamp of my very own, when I came upon this nice big one with its $3 price tag, I just couldn't pass it up. 

 

It's not that I disliked the ivory color.  Ivory is safe, and in the right space it would have been lovely.  But knowing where I wanted to put this lamp, the color felt boring to me.  And I definitely wasn't loving the brassy accents.   Besides, I've been dying to try painting a lamp for the longest time!

So I cleaned it off real good, covered the parts that I wanted the paint to stay off of with plastic bags and painter's tape...

...and got to priming!  I had to FORCE myself to be patient on this step.  When I'm working on furniture, normally I apply one somewhat heavy coat of primer, covering everything pretty well and then call it good.  But with this super glossy lamp I decided to go slow and applied 3 light coats of primer, allowing each coat to dry for about half an hour before applying the next.

Next came the color- a happy, glossy yellow from Krylon called "Bright Idea"- that I picked up at Wal-Mart.  Again, I tried to be patient and applied about 2 1/2 coats before I felt like it was good and covered.

 

I had kind of a hard time photographing the end result, so I apologize.  I topped the lamp with a nice big drum shade that I got at Target on clearance a while back.  The proportion was perfect for this bottom-heavy lamp. 

But then I noticed that my sweet shade had sustained a few bruises in our move that are painfully apparent when the light is on.  Between the seam on one side and the dents that seem to be spread out all the way around the shade, I can't just turn the unsightly part to the back.  Grr.

Can't see 'em when I use my flash, though!  Ha!

I can't stand the dents in the shade.  I'm scheming how I can camouflage those somehow.  In the meantime, though, I'm enjoying my happy new lamp.