Coral Lamp

A few weeks ago I was wallowing in exasperated frustration because my kids had once again broken another lamp in our home. That would make a total of 8 damaged or destroyed lamps, which are now either being held craftily together with string, duct tape, rubber bands, or simply reside at the bottom of the trashcan. I came to the conclusion at lamp #5 that I would no longer spend a significant amount of money on lamps surely knowing their soon to be ultimate doom. Can anyone relate to this lamp destroying mania? The search for a new lamp began. I had to be weighty and not top heavy… oh yes and not thin glass. This time it would be a coral lamp I decided.

 

In my recent post Summer Design Trend: Coral, I had talked about my love for all things coral this year. A coral lamp was on my desire list. I priced out a few coral lamps online and came across this beauty pictured below, but at $501. Yeeowza! $501.. really? I mean it’s already $500 whopping dollars. Do you really need that extra $1? Oh yes, and it’s not even real coral, but resin. For that price I’d expect real coral thank you very much. It’s pretty, but ridiculous!

Lamps Plus

Time to move on and find something a bit more affordable. Joss & Main  were carrying a very similar coral lamp and they had a PAIR of coral lamps for around $150 (you can click on that link if you’d like an invite to Joss & Main). That was a much better price and even that amount was a splurge for me, but they looked so pretty and I had a gift certificate too! Unfortunately, the online picture portrayed a very white coral and these were shiny and beige with yellowish-orange flecks. I was bummed but I reminded myself of my motto…

 Don’t look at something for what it is, but look at something for what it can be!

Out came the paint! Well, in this case, out came some primer! Coral is not shiny, and I knew white primer would adhere to the resin coral, be the color of white I wanted, and have a matte finish like real coral does. I taped off the base used a stenciling brush to work the primer into all the little crevices. In a short amount of time I had two beautifully white coral lamps!

Since I’m not really big on matchy-matchy lamps in every room, I only placed one of the lamps in our upstairs playroom/ TV room. The other will find itself in our music room. I took all of 2 minutes and dumped some sand in a large pedestal bowl and placed in a few starfish. I love fast and easy displays don’t you. Now to keep my 5 year old out of the sand is another issue.

I think it fits in nicely with all the other beach themed décor and I love how the white stands out against the blue walls. The #1 question I get is what is that blue paint color? It’s Atmospheric by Benjamin Moore.

For now I’ll enjoy my coral lamp and will try not to worry about how long it will survive in a house of four rambunctious kiddos.

Be sure to check out my DIY Gallery & Décor Crafts tabs up top.

Kim

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