Nifty Thrifty Friday: Sea Shell Lamp

Nifty Thrifty Friday features items that I have either found a thrift stores or items I already owned and have given new life or upcycled.  These items may be as small as a shoe box or as large as a sofa! I hope you will join me on some of my thrifting adventures!

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Welcome to the first Nifty Thrifty Friday post! Remember the lamp base that I found in this post?  It got a make over, but first a little back story! 

 

While we were in Delaware visiting Grandma we saw this lamp at the Sea Shell Shop and I really wanted it! It would have matched our beach decor perfectly but at $169 it was definitely out of my price range. 

Inspiration lamp, $169

I found a few websites that had similar lamps; like this site, this site, and this site. All of the lamps I found were still pretty expensive so I figured that I would never have my precious sea shell lamp. Enter the $5 lamp base that I found at the thrift store in Delaware. As soon as I saw it, I knew what I was going to do with it!

Here's the lamp in it's original state.

So here's the make over! First I covered the glass with a plastic bag and taped off the areas that I didn't want to get sprayed (to include the cord.)  Side note: I tried to take the whole thing apart but the cord was connected and was not able to be taken apart. 

All taped up

While the spray paint was drying, I got out the shells that I wanted to put in the lamp.

The shells were free thanks to Grandma!

After the spray paint was dry (I did two coats), I took off the tape and the bag... and voila! 

Much better than the brass/silver finish

I started adding the shells to the base. This proved to be very tedious because I wanted to make sure that the "pretty" side of the shell was facing out so that when you look at the lamp you don't see all the insides of the shells. 

Adding the shells

Here's what it looked like after I added the shells. 

Getting closer...

Annnnnnd here it is with a shade (that we already had) put on. Pretty darn close to the inspiration lamp?  Actually, I think I like it more than the inspiration lamp!  

Ta-da!

So how much did this all cost? Let's break it down:

• Lamp base from the thrift store: $5
• Lamp shade: $0
• We had this from an old lamp at our house
• Spray paint: $0
• We had this from a previous project
• Sea shells: $0
• Donated from Grandma!

That is a grand total of $5 (no sales tax in Delaware)! Even if you had to buy the lamp base, lamp shade, spray paint, and the sea shells, I think that you would still be able to make out under $169! 

All settled into it's new home!

So what do you think?