McEntire House Makeover: Potato Stamp Lamp Shade

A few months ago, Jennifer at Dimples and Tangles held a garage sale where I bought a cute little lamp among a few other things.
*Side Note- We won't fully discuss some of the other things I picked up at the garage sale....such as the chairs in this picture that I bought for only $5 each. I got the DIY googley eyes when I saw them and saw SO much potential to paint/recover/etc. Devin thought I was crazy when I brought them home (but what's new).
Currently they're still sitting in our garage in this same state. I haven't given up on them yet. You never want to hear the words 'I told you so' come out of your husbands mouth.

Back to the lamp. I sat it on the table next to our sofa in the living room and the lamp shade was pretty boring.

Devin agreed that we needed a lamp there, and loved the price tag, but his first words were 'It looks like a golf ball.'

Source:http://jpegy.com/cute/haters-gonna-hate-potatoes-gonna-potate-2235

You'll see the irony in this picture in a second.

So in an effort to get creative and not spend any money, I decided I would paint the shade to give it a little pizazz. I wanted something graphic and fun, so I went with hexagons. Am I the only one noticing hexagons everywhere these days?

Exhibit A:

Source:http://iometro.blogspot.com/2013/03/ready-for-brunch.html

Exhibit B:

Source:http://victoriaelizabethbarnes.com/how-to-choose-a-tile-for-a-vintage-bath-marble-hexagon-tile-grey-grout-subway-tile-porcelain-console-sink/

Exhibit C:

Source:https://www.kleenex.com/On-The-Go.aspx

I could keep going. I love it. Hexagons are the new chevron and I'm okay with it. In order to get hexagons on my lamp shade without looking completely janky and freehanded, I decided I needed to make some sort of stamp. Insert Potato. The minute Devin walked passed me with some paint, my lamp shade, and a potato sitting on the table, he gave me the 'I'm not even going to ask' look.

If you need to make a quick stamp, potatoes are perfect. They're firm and won't fall apart on you, but easy enough to cut a design through. I cut mine in half and then scored my hex shape into the potato to make sure it looked even and semi- symmetrical. The lines are a bit hard to see in the picture so I threw in some arrows. I may have gotten a bit carried away with the arrows. #sorrynotsorry

My hexagon looked good enough to me so I cut the shape out. I left some of the skin and more of the potato on the bottom so I'd have something to grip.

I used regular acrylic craft paint that I had lying around the house. Before I went straight for the lamp shade, I did a quick run through on a paper towel to make sure all looked good.

I knew it wouldn't give me great coverage but I wasn't really concerned about that...I planned on going back with a paint brush to fill in the shapes later. I mainly wanted to make sure all my hexagons were a consistent shape and size. I was happy with my test stamps so I started stamping away on my shade.

Thirty minutes later, I was really regretting not cutting a larger hexagon out of that potato.

Once I reached the end, I had an awkward area that I had to freehand.

I went back through and filled in all my little hexys.

And here was the result. I loved the way the hexagons turned out!

We lived with the lamp this way for a few weeks and while I loved the shade, I still felt like the lamp base needed to be a little brighter. The dark brown base next to our current dark brown couch looked dreary. I had some whiteish/greyish chalk paint laying around so I decided to give it a spin.

Remember how I told you Devin thought the base looked like a golf ball? Yeah now it looks like a golf ball. I couldn't leave it like that, so I ran into to the garage and grabbed some sand paper before Devin walked by again to give me another Judge Judy look. I figured the sand paper would give the lamp a little more depth by bringing the texture out...and If I go off of my husbands golf game, golf balls + sand are a match made in heaven. He's gonna kill me.