Shining Light

To start, put a large piece of newspaper down where you will be working, so you don't get paint everywhere. Let's begin with the candle pedestal. There are many ways to antique wood; I went with a two color sponging technique. Start by applying a full coat of flat olive green paint with a brush. Once that dries apply metallic gold paint over it with a sponge. Sponging it allows the first coat of green to show just a bit, to give the pedestal dimension and age. Let it dry. Now plug in your wood burning kit and put it aside.

Take your lampshade and draw a diamond in the center of the shade on two sides, directly across from each other. Take your exacto blade and cut out the diamonds. Then add you first coat of paint to the shade, make sure you use a paint that is heat safe. Brush a watered down coat of pale green onto the shade in about a 6-inch strip around the base of the shade and about a 2-inch strip at the top of the shade, all the way around. Brush a watered down coat of sky blue on the rest of the shade. Let this dry.

Moving back to the candle pedestal: once the paint is completely dry, take your wood-burning tool and begin inscribing a message at the base of pedestal. My message was, "Dreams do bloom in a watered garden." You can pencil the message onto the wood first and then copy over it with the tool, making the font as thin or bold as you like. Then take your glass hurricane and put glue around the base on one side of this glass. Place it inside the lip of the pedestal. The wooden lip will secure the hurricane into place and allow a place for the glue to adhere.

Once the glue dries, you can put your painted lampshade on top of the hurricane. To do this, take a pair of pliers and stretch the metal clamp inside the shade to fit around the glass hurricane. Once all is secure you can begin to decorate your lampshade. For my shade, I peeled 10 green apples and used the skins. Taking clear thread and a needle I began to sew the skins onto the base of the shade in one continues strip around the entire shade. I repeated this step 3 times to give the shade an apple skin fringe. All the apple skins are different lengths, which adds a bit more character to the shade itself. Then I painted flowers on the shade in different areas and glued satin tool flowers to the top of the shades rim, completing the shades decorations. Lastly, take your tall cylinder candle and drop it into the hurricane and light it. The candlelight will illuminate the designs you painted onto your shade and allow the perfect amount of light to shine through your diamonds in the sky.