The wrapped twinkle lights

Who doesn't love twinkle lights? As a teenager I have to admit I had them everywhere in my room, and I also became obsessed with the movie You've Got Mail, more specifically the scene where Meg Ryan  gives an ode to twinkle lights, which then becomes sad because she goes on to remember her dead mother but anyways. Twinkle lights = perfection.

The only problem I have with these beautiful, inexpensive, bringers of cheer is the ugly green cording. While I know it helps with the whole Christmas tree aspect, being able to blend in and all, it kind of is tacky. So of course    I decided to brain storm ideas to fix the problem, spray paint? acrylic paint? and then it hit me. Ladies and Gentlemen I am in fact a moron to not have thought of this sooner. WRAPPED and no I don't mean in a tortilla, although that certainly works for Chipotle (yummy) but in ribbon! It's so easy and I have tons of left over ribbon, and what else can add to this equation to make it perfect...? uh hello.... the herpes of all crafts... yes I'm talking about GLITTER (apologies for the gross reference)!

So first things first: make sure you have some lights that actually work. ( I actually completed this first strand and then when I plugged it in half of them didn't work so I had to unwrap allllll of it and that is horrible) I would also go ahead and set out the ribbon and pick out your glitter.

The next thing I did was put glitter on the lights, the part that holds the tiny bulbs in. Now I tried using just regular old tacky glue first and I found that it made a huge mess SO  I used this super bright pink nail polish I had and never use haha. It worked great! None of the glitter has rubbed off, so thats a plus but if you don't have any nail polish you want to use I would just use glue. I also used some of the Martha Stewart Glitter, sold at all Michael's stores. Its the best glitter, I'm obsessed. If anyone wants to know specifics just let me know :)

So once the glitter was dried I just wrapped all of the green cord in ribbon, and I actually ran out so I had some scrap fabric that I used also.

This whole project kind of took a while, the wrapping gets tedious BUT I was hooked and watching Gilmore girls so I really didn't even notice after the time went by. So Voila! The finished project! Turned on and off, I hope you enjoy!

The tale of the ugly lamp.

I went yard sale-ing a while back and got saw this table lamp for $1 and while it was ugly ( think tacky brushed silver and white) I had an idea I'd be able to turn it into something amazing!

So the first thing I did was I spray painted that sucker with this textured spray paint that I found in my garage, I can't even remember what it was supposed to go to, or what I used it for but it was this one:

I know it says outdoor spaces on it but I've had and used this lamp for about a month now and it seems like its working to me. So I sprayed that evenly and let it dry while I visited our local Target store and got a basic drum lampshade for I think around $15. Okay so originally I wanted to paint the lampshade in this super cool ikat pattern, however as I found out, that was a really hard design to do AND the tape I used left residue, which pretty much just looked awful. So to fix it I just went ahead and painted over it pink. Well, that turned out not to be so good because you could still see the tape residue when the light shined through it so on a whim I was looking around my room, and remembered I had this great scrapbook paper. So I decided to cut out some circles of the scrapbook paper  I already had the paper but I bought it at our local Michael's craft store, and the circle cutter too, (Fiskars brand is the best I think ).

So after cutting tons and tons of circles I glued them to the shade in an overlapping pattern, which I kind of thought resembled fish scales. So after it was all dry I popped a lightbulb in and flipped the switch and  TA-DA  a brand new (to me atleast) cute table lamp!

** and yes that is my handsome boyfriend in the photo :)