Crafts? Yeh, I still do those from time to time ;)

Crafts have been put on the back burner lately and I'm not liking it at all. Since Daniel and I moved to Dallas I haven't had as much free time and have just been letting projects pile up.

Well there are still many that are on my to-do list but recently two of them got to be crossed off.

Over a month ago Daniel and I were visiting our families in Athens when my mother in law asked me if I'd take a few extra lamps off her hands. She'd been to some garage sales and found many of them for a dollar. Yep just one buck.

I don't have any before pictures of my actual lamp. Let's just say it looked something like this...

Not so hot. But my mother in law is a crafting genius and said that brass can easily be painted.

With that in mind, I new what I wanted the lamp to look like. I'd been looking at one in Ballard Designs but at $179 I think I'd have to be crazy to buy it. I refuse to spend a considerable amount of money on something that can be made. So below is the lamp I was wanting except I was wanting it in their rubbed black color but still with the sea grass shade.

Below is the shade I had to work with

Lucky for me, Daniel had just been complaining about our place mats that looked like sea grass so I had bought some new ones. They looked like this. I had got them at a Goodwill in Denton a year or two ago (4 for $1).

I took the fabric off of the lamp shade and even though some of the plastic bad ripped off with it, it seemed usable. 

Then I just got to unrolling the place mats and gluing them to the shade. It took a little while but I think my $5 lamp (including spray paint) will do since I saved about $174. ;)

The next project I conquered was our need for two more dining room chairs. Daniel and I have lived here about 9 months with only two chairs at the dinner table. Not that it really matters, no one eats dinner here but us. But we were on the lookout if we found a good deal. We met some of my family in Canton for First Monday in February and couldn't turn down these $5 chairs. They were hideous (you should have seen the original cushions on them, total '80's) but they had a nice shape and were sturdy so we bought them.

After a few coats of paint, a trip to Hobby Lobby for some fabric for the cushions, and lots of cushion/foam donated by my mother in law I busted out the staple gun and went to work. The end result... we can now seat a table of four. 

We bought the chairs 2 for $10, I spent about $5 on the fabric. I had everything else already or it was given to me. Two chairs, $15? Sounds good to me!

Here's to getting more projects out of the way!