I'm About This Life: Light it Up!!

Good Morning and Happy Columbus Day to Everyone!! The weather around here has started to turn fallish and I am loving it; the colder weather, warm blankets and of course everything pumpkin. Fall…here we come J

Lighting, everyone loves it and needs it (except for my husband, he loves being in the dark literally not figuratively). I have been crushing on some new floor lamps for my downstairs for a long time. This DIY is a combo of two of my favorite lights smashed into one. I spotted this light in the Pottery Barn Catalog and I totally fell in love but at over $200 I totally couldn’t afford it.

I found a cheaper version at Hobby Lobby for $99.00 and even with 50% off it still is out of my budget.

The other floor lamp that I have been crushing on is this one. I saw it on one of my favorite shows, Suits, and fell in love with the lamp and maybe Harvey Specter played by Gabriel Macht. He is really, really, really good looking. I love the easel type base of the lamp with the dome shaped lamp shade.

So, one day I was out in my shed and I stumbled upon this awesome artist easel. The previous owners left behind some really great stuff and I have been finding random places to use them within my home. I discovered the easel a few months ago and I have been trying to come up with some way to create this into a lamp. I googled and found a few different options. All of the options required a lamp kit and installing it into the easel. I was going to totally do this when I got the time however; the other day I came across these contractor lights that my father gave me before they moved. Have you ever walked by something a thousand times and then on the thousand one time you discover the greatest idea. I absolutely love when that happens!! So this is what I came up with!! What do you think…

The step by step instructions are so easy anyone can do this and this project takes less than 2 minutes to complete. All you need to do is set up the easel into the position and height that you would like it to be. This is probably the most difficult part. The second part is then to undo the clamp around the light and re-clamp it around the top of the easel. So simple, right!! This nice thing about this lamp is that you can have it at any height you want and you can always adjust the "lamp" portion to any position that you want. So this project cost me nothing and I have an industrial/modern lamp for my basement, which is totally what I’m going with for downstairs.

So I took the time to help you guys out because I’m assuming that not everyone has an artist easel in their shed and their father hasn’t given them contractor lights. So with that being said…you can purchase the easel at Hobby Lobby. They have a great option for $14.99 and with the 40% off coupon, the cost is $8.99. They also have sturdier one that is black and that was $29.99 and again with 40% off it is $17.99. You could always take the cheaper option and of course spray paint it to whatever will match your décor. You can also check out a local art store and see what they carry. The biggest thing is that you need to make sure that the top of the easel has a base for you to clamp the light on to.

The contractor lights I found at Lowes. They were actually cheaper than what I thought that they would be. For the 8 ½ inch one they were $7.48. They had a smaller option but they weren’t in stock. It was 6 inches. You might want to use this for a table lamp. You can take one of those tabletop easels and then one of those smaller lights. This lamp would then be even cheaper.