C.A.T.- Creative All the Time: Easter Egg Chic?

Yet again, I've taken on a project that may be over my paygrade in terms of execution, but also yet again my stubborness prevailed and the final result is (almost) exactly what I had hoped for.

It all started with this rug,see here:

You can also see it here:

Isn't is the cutest thing ever? Yeah, I thought so too. So I have this rug and I love it, not because I have a current obsession with gray and a slightly bigger obsession with chevron stripe. Nope it's because it's light but still comfy and casual and it's the perfect size. Okay, okay, the gray and chevron stripe DO have something to do with it too. All that to say, the rug started this WHOLE thing. Because you see, I also have this lamp, see here:

He's the little egg on the left. He's kinda a tan colored ceramic egg. Don't let him fool you, that tall brass guy on the left is sorta dwarfing him. Speaking of that brass lamp, he's now a pretty shade of sage with a cute linen shade and Edison bulb.

Here he is again. Sorry about the terrible lighting in this shot.

I've had it for awhile, it was a thrift store find for $7.00. I love so much that it looks like an egg, but I hate that color with all my heart. Well obviously not that dramatic a hate but I was trying to add some emphasis. I've had many ideas for this guy, I didn't really want to paint him a solid color because I knew that utilizing the shape could make more incredible than just "better than it was before". I had this idea of maybe doing something like this, but I was a little nervous how to achieve this but more chic:

So after multiple months of owning these two items, and other projects in between, the light bulb finally went off! White and grey chevron striped lamp! I immediately was in love with the yet to be refinished lamp and I knew that the stripes would look great on that curved shape. My love for this idea was so strong, it overshawdowed some very important things, namely drawing the straight level lines on a compound curve. Oh, and without chipping off the undercoat or making it messy. Yeah, it was a strong love.

Oh, yeah I also forgot to say that I'm having a current obsession with sparkly and metallic things too and I've been dying to try some silver leaf. I ended up using this one from Hobby Lobby:

You can find it here.

Sorry about my rambling on all my current design obsessions but I really do have a point. Basically it's that I chose to combine all those things I just rambled off into one clean, sparkly, chevron stipe lamp that matches my rug to sit on my new nightstand:

I blogged about his transormation here.

I had to start by getting a little rust off of the top of the lamp.

All I did was try to buff it out with a brillo pad and that seemed to do the trick.

Now, getting down to business. I wasn't quite sure how to achieve the look I wanted but I knew that I did want a white base, so I went ahead and sprayed it with a white lacquer spray paint.

From Home Depot. Now that I see pictures, I used the Krylon brand, but I'm sure they are very similar.

Before the first coat. I taped the top and the wiring with paper towels and electrical tape. I also used a little painter's grease on the parts that couldn't get taped just to keep the paint off. Hint: you can also use Vasoline to achieve the same thing.

The change already helped in his apperance!

First Coat

Second Coat

Soooo it was Thanksgiving weekend when I did this. So at this point I got pretty distracted by this:

AND THIS:

So the lamp was white. Whoo hoo? It was a least an improvement over the dingy tan. Cue moment of panic. I had a realization as a was ready to start the next phase of the project that I still had no idea how to accomplish those oh so trendy stripes that I had been yearning for. **This part of the story is long so bear with me** I started with this pattern I found online:

I may have gotten distracted by something else at this point:

She loves to snuggle-especially if you still smell like turkey.

I was thinking that I could just trace the pattern on the lamp and just make sure that it was straight and that the rows were even. WRONG. Because the lamp is more or less an oval shape (it gets wider in the middle) that just didn't work. So after lots of trial and error, I had to basically trace one zig (for lack of a better word) and then mark off the whole lamp to get the stripes that I was wanting. Pictures speak louder than words for this part.

The making of an Easter egg

Stripes!

Whew! Once that was over I erased all the extra marks I was ready to start the silver leaf but I didn't want to tape off all the stripes, because really it would take forever to get all those angles right so I tried this mastic. It's a product that artists use to keep paint off of certain spaces without using tape.

I just painted the masking fluid on the stripes I didn't want the silver leaf to get on as practice but it didn't work out so well.

It comes off really cleanly normally. My experience was ok with this stuff but I think the nature of this project wasn't so good for this because it took the spray paint off.

So basically at this point I was just desperate to try the silver leaf and get this guy done so I just started the leafing process without anything protecting the white stripes (I would later find that this was a mistake).

The whole silver leaf process was fairly easy. You just paint the adheisive on the parts you want the silver leaf to go on to, let it dry, and then stick on the silver leaf. After that all you have to do is add a sealer and your done! I make it sound a tad easier than it actually was. It was really thin and hard to keep off your fingers, and it did unfortunately stick to some of the white stripes.

So this part got done and I was happy but I still needed to fix the stripes and the bumps and nicks and silver flecks that the white stripes had gotten along the way.

Annnnd then Christmas happened...

And the Alamo Bowl...

Then finally I had a break down (well not really but I was reluctant to do this) and taped the silver leaf with painter's tape (knowing full well I would have to do touch up silver leafing later), and re sprayed the white stripes. I sprayed it so that all the color would be even and there were no paint brush strokes showing. I know what it looks like from the picture... (hint: Easter is still months away but yet there's an egg looking lamp in this picture)

It did take me hours to tape this guy (literally hours). Impressed??? You shouldn't be I should have taped before hand so that this didn't have to happen. I learned my lesson, but let's face it I will always be too eager to start something to make sure everything is in place first again, and inevitably something like this will happena gain..oh well.

I had to reverse the tape so that I could touch up the silver leaf now, and again it took me hours.

I added the silver leaf sealer at this point too.

Finally just a few touch ups with the white and it was finally done. I feel like J.R.R. Tolkien and that I could have written three books about the shiny spherical object and my quest to get it. (except I'm not a hobbit nor trying to save a mythical shire with the help of ridicoulsy good looking elves like Orlando Bloom).