singing the blues...

The great thing about not putting a whole lot of money into decorating, is how easy it is to change things out.

You may remember the lamp from our living room- I found it at a thrift store and snagged it for $4. I mentioned in that post that the blue was the "perfect" shade of blue. Except it wasn't.

After we purchased the quatrefoil area rug (more on that here) the two blues just weren't jiving. See what I mean?

The lamp blue is a really bright blue and the rug is more of a gray. But in natural light the rug is really blue, it just gets walked all over by that bright blue lamp! And no offense lamp- I want the rug to steal the show!

I decided that I wanted a knock off mercury glass lamp. I couldn't decide on an accent color for the room (besides blue), so I thought keeping it neutral would be a good idea.

I had bought the spray paint to do this project months ago. I haven't been in Walmart since January so I've had the paint since before then.

This was the "look" I was going for:

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The lamp got 2-3 thin coats of Krylon silver. I'm not a huge fan of Krylon paint (I much prefer Rustoleum) and this whole project reminded me why! Look at the cap of the spraypaint (I wanted that mirror shiny silver effect) and look at the color of the lamp- pretty pathetic.

So back to square 1. Of course I did some research about making a mercury glass lamp and everything I found said you needed to start with glass (like a vase or glass base) and spray Krylon's "Looking Glass" on the INSIDE of the glass. Who knew.

The obvious trouble I ran into was my lamp wasn't glass. Womp womp.

I searched through my spray paint armory shelf and found trusty old ORB (oil-rubbed bronze). I had some cans leftover after spraying all our doorknobs and hardware.

For now it'll do. I like the dark color- I feel like it "grounds" it, but I'm not sure how I feel about it next to our brown couches. I also had to find my wedding bouquet a new home because the light bulb reflected off the glass. This is my favorite picture of Sadie hands down.

I would just shove the lamp in the attic and wait for more inspiration, but Josh voiced his opinion about how I "better not ever move that lamp" because he sits in that chair to read/do work. :) So for now it'll stay.

I see something more along the lines of this eventually:

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or this:

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The funny thing about accessories is that it makes me happy to try to figure this out! I've learned I won't always like something the first time around and that's ok! Rooms are suppose to evolve and change.