Sunday, January 6, 2013

Button Lampshade and Thrift Store Lamps

I finally finished my button lampshade! It was a lot of work, and I can find oh so many things I don't like about it, but it's done. 'Nuff said.
 
I actually don't have problem with the shade as much as how it suits the lamp that bothers me. 
The lamp is formal, the shade feminine. Sometimes the difference bothers me, sometimes not not so much.

But finishing the shade got me thinking about thrift store lamps. I started thrifting years ago and found the lamp above in the late eighties in a DAV store in Oak Cliff, a Dallas neighborhood, for around $15. (Actually my friend found it and let me buy it. She's got the best eye of anyone I've ever known!) It's getting harder to find lamps of this quality anymore. Not impossible, just harder.
This one came from a junk shop in Mesquite, a Dallas suburb, around the same time. I paid $4 for it, but it had had its electrical bits removed. Isn't she gorgeous? A friend says she looks like Elizabeth Taylor, and maybe she does a bit.
The friend who found that first lamp found this one as well. As I said, she has an eye. Anything Margie finds is either beautiful or worth a lot of money, often both.

This was painted gold when she found it, though I think the original finish might have been bronze-like. I stripped as much of the gold paint as I could, but it'll never be what it once was.
Here's a closer look at the details. Cool, huh?

Several years ago I found a lamp for my sister and posted about it here.
I fell in love with it myself and if I hadn't already promised it to her would have kept it. Wouldn't my button lampshade look terrific on it? Ever since I've wanted one just like it, but they sell for several hundred dollars if you find them on the 'net. So I bought this one for about thirty dollars.
Similar but not the same quality and much larger. Hmm, wonder how my button lampshade would look on it. Maybe I'll try switching things around tomorrow.

I'm sharing this post with Chic on a Shoestring's Flaunt it Friday.  Check it out!