Rainbow Fish Watercolor lamp

My lamp is cooler than yours. Hands down. 
It reminds me of the Rainbow Fish from the children's book series. It provides a nice gentle blend of color. I love the vibrant radiance of it's marbled watercolor appearance.

For my birthday last year I was given a very nice Ott Lamp, which provides wonderful ambient lighting to craft by and to photograph with. It is so very functional, but a little less than fashionable.

See? It needed to be more fabulous. With summer imminent and free time on my hands (I just finished my AP test, so the whole school year is downhill from here, YAY!) I wanted to give it a nice colorful upgrade. 

My first task was to even out the lamp around where that nice diagonal line goes. 

I busted out my hot glue gun and kept adding glue until there was a gentle decline from the upper level to the lower one. I kept smoothing it out with the tip of the gun until it was smooth.

Next I covered up that hot glued area with some scrap paper so all the circles would go on more smoothly later on. I chose to use Modge Podge for this step, but white glue would've worked just as well. 

Now I made some doodly watercolor designs on a few sheets of 8.5 X 11 printer paper. I used the most basic Cayola watercolor set, you know, the type that you used in elementary school. 

Next I used my  handy dandy Fiskars 2 inch circular hole punch to create lots of happy colorful discs. The paper wasn't super rigid because the watercolors left it a little warped, so some circles had raggedy edges that I cleaned up with a pair of scissors. 

Here comes the fun part.  I Modge Podged and layered up all the circles on my lamp, being sure  to leave no spaces uncovered. Make sure to seal it well to avoid any unsealed edges that may be snagged later on. 

When I got to the bottom I curled all the edges under and used extra Modge Podge to keep it all sealed underneath. It was a tad bit of a challenge because, you know round surface around an edge on a flat surface, but I just folded it on top of itself. 

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I then got to whip out my glitter tape (YES IT'S A THING AND IT'S FABULOUS!) and covered the black base of the lamp. The piece really needed a glittery touch. 

Doesn't that look great? Yes, Yes it does. 

Here it is all lit up! Be sure to watch out for it illuminating future posts!

Extra bonus: Today I learned how to make GIF's using an app on my camera, and this practice GIF I made makes me happy :)

I called for Gracie and she got all excited and licked my camera lens.

Prepare for many GIFs in the future!