There is a second hand store here in town that I shop in all the time. It's a very welcome part of our rather remote town, because the nearest real shopping place is thirty miles from here. It has saved me many a trip over the hill and a lot of money over the years. Plus being just plain fun to rummage around in.
There's a young woman who works there two days a week who knows about my eco dyed papers. We got to talking one day about a lamp that she bought in a yard sale for two dollars. The lampshade used to be covered with fabric, but it had worn out and been taken off and all that was left was a metal spiral frame. I told her I would try to see if I could cover it for her. I made no guarantees, but it seemed like a fun thing to try.
I have never worked on a project like this before. I thought from the very first moment I started until the very last that it was going to be a disaster. The whole time I was putting strips of paper on it, gluing them with Mod Podge I was saying... "This isn't going to work. This is a mess. I'm gonna have to take all this off. This is going to look weird. It will be too fragile. I don't know what the heck I'm going. Gaaaahhhh!"
And then, all of a sudden, it was finished. And it HAD worked. I wasn't too fragile. It didn't look [too] weird. I didn't have to take it all off. And .... well, I STILL didn't know what the heck I had actually done, but it was... done!
I don't think you can call yourself a genius when you were that terrified the entire time you were attempting something. I was the victim of sheer dumb luck.
These photos don't really do it justice. But the most important thing is she LOVED it! It's was a very unusual lamp to start with. Now it is REALLY unusual!
I'm glad the two days of terror are over.
Oh how we sometimes suffer for our art!
(Gawd. Let's dial back the drama shall we? It's only a lampshade. Buck up Cupcake.)
Hey, I'm still peeling Mod Podge off my fingers. How about showing a little compassion.
(Nope. I'm afraid to say that a little residual white glue doesn't qualify for any sympathy from these quarters.)
One wonders what would....
(One does.)
