Make It Monday - How to Create a Tea Light Lamp from a Wine Glass

Check it Out!  I found some more wine glasses while straightening up my storage building last week.  Since it wasn't a complete matching set, I knew I wanted to repurpose them. And since I have some battery powered tea lights I thought why not turn them into mini lamps! Although I realize that what I found are actually martini glasses, I am positive these lamps can be made with all sorts of wine and drink glasses.  It's all about creating the lamp shade that turns the glass itself into a tealight lamp.  

Once you create the actual lamp shade, decorating it is up to your imagination and decorating needs.  I don't have a lot of supplies, so I was limited on what I could do.  I had these grand visions of painting and trimming them with lace and beads.  Yeah, the supplies to do that are just not in my craft room at the moment and definitely not in my budget either.  So using my "work with what you have" motto, I came up with a few different looks.  Pretty basic, but none the less effective.  

I am not one for measuring and figuring out dimensions and all so I just looked around for two round objects that would fit the shape and size I needed for these martini glasses.  I ended up using a charger plate and a glass top to one of my storage containers.  I also used a roll of craft paper that I had.  You could use wrapping paper or any other paper that is wide enough to roll up into a shade.

Using the charger plate I traced half of it onto the edge of my paper.  Then I used the smaller circle traced inside the larger one to create the top of the shade.  

After cutting the shape out, I simply rolled it so that one end slightly overlapped the other creating a lamp shade.  You can use what ever adhesive you would like, tape, glue dots, glue to adhere the ends together.  I used double sided tape.

To create the shade at the very top of this post, I ripped pages from an old book.  I ripped the pages down to smaller pieces that I glued in a hod-podge fashion.  I really love this look, it is my favorite of all the ones I made.  And it looks perfect on a book shelf.  

I also tried stamping on one of the shades.  This would be great using vellum so the light from the tea light shows through more.  I didn't have any but maybe next time!

To create the scalloped edge of the shade I used another smaller lid to make small half circles.  I marked the side of the lid with a white marker so I could make sure my half circles were all the same size.  After cutting them out I used a small hole punch to punch holes all around the edges.  

Again this project could be done in so many ways and in as little or as great of detail as desired.  But these little table lamps are such a cute addition to decor and when the power goes out, a source of light since they use battery powered tealights.  They would also be great decoration for weddings, dinner parties and other functions.