People say it’s a bad thing to bottle up emotions because it is bad for your health. But if your emotions look anything like our colored fabric light cords, we say bottle it up – and a lot of it. Inspired by cheap glassware and mason jar filled Pinterest pages we came up with these fun and fairly easy DIY lamp designs. After grabbing an old mason jar out of our grandmother’s basement, picking up a $3 carafe at Wal-Mart, and finding a sweet vintage food canister at our local thrift store, we figured we would drill some holes, and create some great glass lamps.
We took a stab at our interpretation of the mason jar as a light fixture. To begin assembling this fixture we first took our trusty diamond tip drill bit and drill, and began drilling a 3/8” hole. We used a small piece of putty to create a water reservoir, and the spray bottle to keep adding water. This kept the drill bit and glass cool. Once we had our hole drilled, we slipped in a clear barrel cord grip in the hole, and then slipped six feet of cord through the cord grip and began wiring the plug end. Once the plug end was wired, we wired the socket, and then managed to shove thirty feet of our copper cord from the Shine Collection in the mason jar. We then created a 1 5/8” hole in the mason jar lid for the socket, and used the socket ring to hold the socket in place. The wire bulb cage and Edison bulb completed the cool fixture.
Our modern approach at a glassware lamp lead us to creating this dark magenta and grey silicone socket covered lamp out of a glass carafe. This was the easiest of the 3 lamps because it simply required drilling a 3/8” hole at the bottom of the vase, and simply slipping the color cord through the drilled hole and wiring the socket and plug at either end. We used a clear barrel cord grip where the cord goes through the glass fixture to not only protect the cord, but also create a nice finished look. This fixture is unlike the others we created because it has the option of changing appearances. This lamp bends all of the rules of a traditional lamp in a sleek, chic, and fashionable way.
This cool wide mouth glass canister caught our eye at the thrift store and we thought why not turn it in to a lamp. We have a glass drill bit after all. We decided to begin by drilling a 3/8” hole in the top of the canister. This allowed us to fit in our standard cord grip in the hole. We then wired our standard socket and a flat top metal socket cover in white on the inside of the canister lid. We used our smaller tesla bulb, to prevent too much heat from building up inside the canister. We drilled our 3/8” hole with our glass drill bit on the side of the fixture, to give the heat somewhere to go (although we monitor the heat when we have this fixture on). We took our long length of cord, and instead of putting it on the inside of the fixture we wrapped it on the outside. And it looks phenomenal if we say so ourselves.
We have long seen people up-cycling anything they could get their hands on, and we figured we would give it a go. Mostly because it gave us a reason to buy a new drill and a diamond tip glass drill bit, but that’s beside the point. So much fun was had while creating these fixtures. We would love to see the fun you’ve had if you taken a go at one of these or an original design of your own.
