Blue Light Special

This past weekend we decided to do absolutely nothing. How often do you do that? For us, almost never. There is always something waiting to be done.  But we ignored it all and just relaxed. Tom napped in the hammock for hours, and I read an entire book.

We did manage to fit one little project in though. Something just for fun. I had bought a large glass vase at Homesense a few weeks ago and Tom decided to turn it into a lantern for the deck.

I realized afterwards that no one took a picture of the vase before we started. If you can imagine no rope around the base, this is what it looked like in the store.

It's about 14 inches high and it gave the living room a much needed pop of colour. And then Tom swiped it. I guess I'll just have to buy another one, won't I, Tom?

We started by building a wooden base to give it stability. Tom drew two concentric circles on a scrap piece of wood and cut out the outside circle with the jigsaw.

He used the router to carve out the inner groove that the vase would fit into and a smaller circle in the centre for the light. I'm sure there is a more poetic way to describe this but it isn't coming to me right now.

I puttied the holes, sanded all of the edges, and then did my favourite finish - two coats of Minwax Jacobean stain, two coats of watered down beige paint, and then a coat of wax.  

The light is just a little flashlight. It has one centre light and four outside lights for different levels of brightness. We glued it into the center of the base to keep it steady.

While the glue was setting, I hot glued thick twine to the top (formerly the bottom) of the vase. The base is very rustic looking and the top needed something to balance it out.

It's pretty cute, right? The edge of the vase fits tightly into the groove in the base, yet it easily slides out to turn the light on and off.

Some wicker and starfish to give it a nautical edge.

We waited around for dark to take some more shots. Unfortunately the mosquitoes were so bad that I could only get a few. And my arms ended up with a dozen bites anyway.

Tom is so proud of this one. We paid $14 for the vase and $5 for the light. Everything else we already had. So less than $20 all together. How much do you think it would cost in a store? 

I'm kind of proud of it, too!

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I'm linking up here this week!