Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Simple, cute lamp shades.


Another great thrift store find - 3 silver lamp bases for a total of 24 dollars!  Perfect for my girls' room.  I've been trying to find lamps for awhile now and just didn't want to shell out 20 - 80 bucks for 3 small to large lamps.  The best thing about these lamps - they had two types of "fitters", the spider and the uno.  I took the finials off and chose to go with uno shades since they were least expensive and readily available.

A quick aside about fitters, this is important, especially if you're buying thrift store lamps.

Spider - The term "spider" refers to the arms attached to the top inside rim of the lampshade that hold the lampshade fitter in place.

Clip fitters - Clip fitters have a loop of wire extending downward from the lampshade's spider that slides over the top of the light bulb. Torpedo clip fitters are shaped to fit onto elongated bulbs and bulb clip fitters are shaped to fit onto the round-topped light bulbs.

Uno fitters -Uno fitters have a hollow round piece situated at the center of the lampshade's spider that slides over the fixture's socket. Sometimes the uno fitter and socket are threaded which gives the lampshade greater stability. 

Washer fitters -Washer fitters consist of a washer attached to the arms of the spider. The harp sits underneath the spider and the finial screws onto the harp with the washer fitter sitting between. This entire piece is then attached to the lamp socket.

I bought the lamp shades new, from Target.  The biggest one was about $13.00 and the smallest $7.00.  The one with the green bow is the medium sized shade and it was about $9.00 or $10.00.  So another 30 bucks and we have full lamps, but they were kind of boring. 

I made a quick trip to Michael's for some ribbon, plugged in the trusty hot glue gun, and now have custom lamps that match my girls' room. 

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