Saturday, December 28, 2013

Free Tutorial: Embellishing a Boudoir Lamp

When it comes to home decor some folks like primitive, some like modern, some edgy, some traditional, but for me, I love pretty! An environment that falls somewhere to the right of Victorian with the organic smoothness of Art Nouveau.

A plain, simple boudoir lamp from Wal-Mart seemed to need ''' something '''. At the same store I bought a package of beaded fringe in colors that I loved. Both were pretty. :-)  Soon small amounts of soft colors were mixed and molded into flowers in shades of pale lavender, pink, off-white pale yellow and leaves in a soft soft green.

The parts that were molded were then shaped to the side of the lamp that was laying on its side on a big fat towel. They were laid out in the pattern in which they would be glued onto the lamp base after baking.

I knew that wouldn't be possible to put the lamp itself with the clay on it into the oven so by putting the clay on the lamp first to create the curved pieces for the design pattern I was able to gently remove each unbaked piece and lay them on some Fiber-Fil batting in order to preserve the curve on the back of each piece.

Parts were baked for about 30 minutes and allowed to cool on the batting before removal if there was any little tiny pieces of the fiber fill batting on the pieces it was removed before gluing. Once again the lamp base was laid on the big fluffy towel on its side and I laid out the design using the baked pieces.

Using E– 6000 glue and following the instructions, I applied a small dot of glue where a pieces to go on the lamp and applied some of the same glue to the back of the piece that would go there and laid them both out for about a minute to cure. By doing this the E-6000 in would be able to grab the individual surface like the glass of the base and the back of the baked piece of clay. After this short curing time the molded piece was placed onto the base and press firmly into place.

We used to take this lamp with us to shows and put it on the table with the light on so that people could see how pretty it looked with the molded flowers and leaves beaded edge and decorated shade because we were selling the mold that was used to make it.


The mold used to make this lamp was PJ 025 Summer Blooms. It is one of the very first molds that we made when we started making our original urethane rubber molds. You can find this mold on our website:

 http://www.bestflexiblemolds.com/PJ025.htm

However this project works equally well with any molded parts of polymer clay or even hand sculpted polymer clay pieces that are shaped and baked in the same shape as the base of a lamp, photo frame or vase etc.
For the full tutorial, you can go to Pinterest:
Thanks For visiting my blog again. Have fun!

Yours for a prettier world,
Penni Jo Couch

2 comments:

Wendy said...

Lovely! What a great idea

Penni Jo AKA Claylady43 said...

Thank you so very much Wendy. I appreciate your encouraging words.
Penni Jo