Little Bird With a French Fry: giant

Wow!

It has been such a BUSY few weeks. We had my brother fly in from England and stay a few weeks, it was a lot of fun, the boys love him and Jasper still asks me every day ' where is Joe mama?' Such a sweet little boy!

Recently bought a pom pom maker, it was totally a random buy. I saw Anthropologie using one at one of their craft days so decided to go look at those little suckers with no intension to buy it since i really didn't make pom poms often enough. Anyway, i took it home and made a fabulous ( if i do say so myself ... and i do! ) Pom pom wreath!

I love wreaths and changing them out each season or holiday.

This will be my Christmas Pom pom wreath.

Im pretty proud of it, Alan was even able to help out! He made 2 pom poms!

The boys love to run their fingers though it and try to pull the pom poms off daily, they had a pom pom fight during the making off.

Anyway, enough talking, heres some pictures!

Right now I'm super ticked that i haven't been saving my money for a new camera! It's the top of my list next year. You would think an old photography student would have one but i don't.

I used a combination of 100% natural wool, alpaca and a little cheap chunky acrylic. I love the overall natural feel to it.

It will hang by this teal velvet ribbon once i get round to it, for now its just hung by a thread. It will probably come crashing down tonight.

I honestly feel the images don't do it justice!

Seriously, someone buy me a new camera!

Oh! I'm also selling these bad boys in my Etsy shop!

Have you seen THIS lamp from Anthropology? It's the industrial spool lamp.

Yeh i love it too but it comes with a nice hefty $400 price tag which I'm never willing to pay for a lamp!! I love the fact its a giant spool! all my favorite things in one.

After looking it over online for about a life time, i decided that i could probably make it. When i say i totally mean my husband Alan could probably make it.

This is what we pulled off ...

It was HARD to capture the full length image.

The lamp measures a little over 5 feet tall and the base is 10 inches wide.

Albs Pretty much built this lamp and I fiddled with the aesthetics. The total cost was less than $20

So here is how we did it ...

What you need:

- 3, 10" wooden circles {i cut mine out of a big piece of wood that was 1 x 12 x 4}

- Lamp Kit {i used the hard wear from an old boring floor lamp but walmart sells the kits.}

- 5 feet of PVC piping {found in the plumping section}

- A ball of 100% cotton yarn in cream

- wood stain

I'll do my best to explain things, i always forget to take an adequate amount of pictures.

We first cut out 3 circles that are 10 inches in diameter.

You can also buy these pre cut.

Then we drilled a hole in each one. In 2 of them we drilled a 3/8" size hole and in the other we drilled a 1" and 5/8 hole.

Then i stained them a dark colour.

I then glued 2 discs together, one with a big hole and one with a small hole using wood glue. { i kinda missed a few photo opportunities but I'm sure you get the idea}

This is the base so thread the lamp cord through the bottom and into the PVC pipe.

Then i used hot glue to secure the pipe in the hole. Can you see how the larger hole allows the pipe to sit in the base?

On the last disc, drill a 1 5/8 inch hole but only go half way through, this is so the top of the pipe can sit in the top of the 'spool' attach your lamp hard wear to the top disc.

mine looks a little shabby but its ok you won't see it.

Glue the top to the top of the pipe.

The starting at the bottom glue your yarn for a starting point and then wrap your yarn all the way up to the top.

It takes awhile but you'll get there eventually, i liked to wrap it round loosely about 8 times then twist the yarn on the pipe to tighten it and make it look neater, Don't make it too neat and orderly, i think it gives your lamp more texture.