Thursday, February 18, 2010

silly ideas that turn out well: slinky lampshade.


i had a lamp base. i had a nice bulb. but it didn't have a shade -- or one that fit, and i'm sick and tired of the same old-same old paper lampshades. i didn't want a paper lantern, and i wasn't sure what the hell i could use to make this look nice.

the other day my sister happened to have a tangled-up metal slinky hanging off of a cabinet knob in her apartment. lo! i thought, tangling up a bunch of slinky toys might just do the trick! and won't you believe it -- half price books had a veritable mountain of miniature metal slinkies for sale. so i bought 15 of them, unabashedly carrying around a bag of slinkies like i have a serious compulsion or something, and brought them home.

it took me about an hour to stretch and tangle them all together -- i didn't really have a plan. and i didn't know how they would react to all the twisting and pulling. and they were really annoying to work with at first; i almost thought i blew $25 on slinkies only to get frustrated and discouraged, and to get metallic crap all over my hands that smelled metallic -- have you ever smelled a slinky? i even tried cutting out the bottom of a planters nuts countainer because the metal ring of the rim fit perfectly into the lamp base that i have. but the slinkies absolutely refused to sit nicely on the ring, and once i started wrapping the metal around the ring, it no longer fit where it needed to go. had to scrap that idea.

then it dawned on me that i had a spare glass jar in the cabinet, so i used that as a base onto which to tangle and "sculpt" to the slinkies. it's weird, yes. but i love it.


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