I really disliked that lamp!
I've been trying to figure out what should go in as a replacement, but everything that I found was either way out of my price range or not quite right. I wanted to make that corner feel natural and a little organic, and not too "finished." I also wanted something that would tie into my wall mounted "baskets" (aka ikea placemats and bowl :) which had started to look a little random. And if they looked random to me, I can only imagine that they would look more so to someone who didn't know how I was really holding out for some antique winnowing baskets but hadn't happened to find any yet.....This is what I came up with in my rough sketch mock-up (forgive the 1/2 a cow hide rug and sub-par photoshop skills :) I am planningn drapes to replace the roman shades down the line, but rest assured that they won't look like these :)
I liked the look of West Elm's discontinued Abaca pendant, but couldn't find any good replacement. However, I did find this tutorial explaining how to make something similar. I liked the concept but not all the materials that they used.
So, I took this :
Covered it inch by inch in this:
wrapped it around this:
and wound the mod-podge covered string around it until it looked like this:
Let it dry, then deflated and removed the ball like this:
and hung it up like this:
I like how it doesn't make that corner too cluttered, and how it looks like one of the baskets just jumped off the wall. It casts awesome shadows too!You can check out my complete instructions here, which I posted on this lovely blog started by my very talented friend Molly who I wish didn't live halfway across the country.
