Get a grip: concrete lamp

I like making practical, fun stuff. For me, "practical, fun stuff" often comes in the form of homemade lamps, I'm not sure why. I understand that, stereotypically, architects have a thing for chair design, and while I can appreciate a well thought out chair, I swoon at clever lighting concepts. Once I discovered the bags of lighting fixtures commonly found for very little in the "As-Is" section of Ikea, my crafting life took on a new, brighter life. Perhaps this is why I never went ahead with architectural studies. Or maybe not - we may never know for sure.

This "fist" lamp was a project for a sculpture class I took some time ago. It involved casting my own left hand while holding  a lamp fixture. After casting my hand/arm using plaster bandages - it was a three-part mold - while holding the fixture, I poured concrete into the mold and let it set for a few days. I then placed the finished piece into a square form - a mold made from plastering a deep square stretcher frame - and poured a concrete base in which to support the hand and hide the wire from view. Embedded in both the fist and the base, is the wire of the lamp fixture - I hope I never have to rewire it.

Oh - the fun you can have with plaster bandages, some wiring and a large bag of concrete!

Paint Can spot light.

Upon moving into my new flat a few years a go, I undertook the fairly typical process of repainting the whole place. Lucky for me, it being a small flat, this only took a few cans of paint (I used Ben Moore's EcoSpec, which has no VOCs) and a few friends. At the end of the day, I was left with a number of empty paint cans and a sense that there was something more that could be done with them than simply dropping them off at the local EcoCentre for recycling.

I was presented with the additional challenge of adequately lighting a beautiful piece of sculptural work that I had just purchased from a friend of mine, Stephen Kawai. That's how I came to create the paint can spot light.

I'm a fan of the "as is section" of Ikea. Often you can find bags of random light fixtures. I like to buy those bags and therefore always have a few random light fixtures in my craft closet. Lamp making is a fun little past time, and a fairly common way to make use of old materials.

After cleaning and spray-painting one of the paint cans, I drilled a hole in the side of the can and placed a white GRUNDTAL fixture at the bottom of it. This is commonly used as a kitchen counter-top spotlight.



On the whole, it's pretty basic, but it works really well. I have a few more cans and ideas for how to make them into neat light fixtures. Another day, another craft project, another post.