Every month Stacy from Not Just a Housewife sends a pair of DIY bloggers a home decor item in the mail and challenges them to create something unique with it.  She calls it the Styled x3 challenge.   (You can see examples of previous challenges at the bottom of her post.) 
This month she challenged myself and Claire from A Little Clareification to style this hyacinth bowl in our own way.  And you know me.. I needed to bring out the POWER TOOLS!

What may be hard to see from this photo is that this bowl (or basket really) is only 6 inches across.  It would fit in the palm of your hand.. and so that was a challenge for me.  I knew I wanted to turn into a lampshade, but finding the right lamp was the hard part.

ENTER.. IKEA.  (Of course!)

Ikea now has a great line of copper accent lighting and after bringing the bowl to my local store and trying it on dozens of fixtures, this is the one I settled on: the Jansjo desk lamp (although Ikea also makes a USB and clip on version as well if you didn’t want the big stand.)  At Ikea it retails for under $13.

When you combine those two things together.. this is what you get:


I think it came out SUPER AWESOME!

The process is really simple and the only things you need (in addition to the bowl/basket and the lamp) is a drill with a forstner bit and some heavy duty adhesive (I used Gorilla Glue.)


The Jansjo fixture comes in pieces and what you need to do is drill a hole the size of the LAMP STEM (don’t drill it the size of the actual light since that will mean the basket will slip off.) You want the hole to be *just a hair* larger than the base of the stem (where it attaches to the weighted bottom). I used my drill press for this but you could also use a regular drill. The forstner bit leaves a nice clean hole and the weave of this bowl is tight enough that it doesn’t unravel:

Next, feed the bottom of the lamp into the bottom of the bowl and through the hole.

Now assemble the rest of the lamp (you want to do this so you can get the lamp to stand up)
Run a THIN LINE of glue around the inside of the hold in the basket (remember Gorilla glue expands like crazy so be very very stingy with the glue!)

Now carefully pull the lamp through the hole until the back of the light housing comes in contact with the basket.  By doing it this way the glue line is hidden and the back side of the lamp still looks ‘finished’. Bend the neck of the lamp so the light is pointing straight down. The weight of the basket is enough to hold it in place while the glue dries (this is why you attached the base of the lamp onto the stem before gluing!)

After about 60 minutes you are good to go.  If it is at all lose you can touch up the glue (from the inside.) 
Quite the transformation of a $5 bowl! 
I want to thank Stacy for the opportunity to work on this project.  It was fun to have to force myself to be creative like this!