Funky Artsy Fast Paper Light

AFTER – Funky Artsy Light

BEFORE – Ugly Blah Light Fixture

This week I’m revisiting some projects I completed before I started this blog, so I apologize in advance that most of them will not have detailed how-to pictures, but I will do my best to explain them..

. The Funky Artsy Fast Light happened one cold winter afternoon, when I was looking at this light in the upstairs landing. I hate this light, as you can see in the “before” picture, it’s pretty damn boring. We’ve been looking for something amazing for this spot and have yet to find the perfect light fixture, but I couldn’t stand looking at this ugly thing another minute, so I came up with this temporary fix. I was inspired to the idea by the light below, but didn’t want to spend that much time cutting out intricate designs (at least not on this ):

From Artecnica Lighting http://www.yliving.com/artecnica-midsummer-light-f8404.html

So I dug through my art supplies, and found a few large sheets of vellum and a sheet of handmade rice paper left over from old projects. I grabbed my xacto knife and got to work freehand cutting organic shapes out of the papers. The shapes looked something like this:

I then removed the glass half-dome light fixture, draped the cut paper & vellum shapes over the opening in the top of the glass, and reattached it to the ceiling. You could use any number of fancy papers and vellum in many color combinations for this project, just avoid opaque papers if you want the light to come through. This is also a great idea for renters. Your local art supply store should a have a nice selections of papers to choose from. I say, really layer the papers on there, the more the better. I used 4 sheets on this, but could certainly have used more. NOTE: See that no paper is touching or even close to the bulb, and is no where near any wires! Use a compact florescent bulb or led bulb, they put off less heat. Let’s not burn down the house with our artsy new light ok?

The final light is fun and flirty, and now I can live with it until we find something that really knocks our socks off, and it only took about an hour.