Back in early December we'd made a stop into our local Habitat ReStore to seek out the perfect piece of reclaimed wood for this bath caddy we ended up making. While we were scouring around, you may remember how Mary made mention of these large outdated and in-need-of-repair glass light fixtures:
In her mind, these fixtures were just waiting for a second life — and that second life was meant as lanterns. We've seen glass geometric lanterns like the inspiration shots below popping up across high-end home and decorating stores, so the idea clicked when we spotted these glass lights.
Image credits: Anthropologie // Terrain // Not on The High Street
It wasn't long after we returned from our visit to Brooklyn that she asked me to go back to the ReStore just to see if the fixtures were still there (we all know what that means, right?). So it was off to ReStore for me — by the way, I think it was 12 degrees that day.
These are the types of loving husband/wife texts we send, ha:
I have to admit, her vision turned out well in the end. The basic idea is deconstructing and removing the lighting components from inside the fixture to use the glass shell — and that's where my past life as an electrician came in handy:
The glass shell is then cleaned, flipped over and used to house pillar candles.
Can we talk about pillar candles for a minute? My past shopping history hasn't involved pricing candles before. Well, I beelined for one of the biggest pillar candles I could find when we were out looking, and nearly dropped it when I saw the $50 price tag. Mary laughed at me when I carefully placed it back on the shelf in shock, saying, I don't think I've ever seen a $50 candle. Who knew I had such swanky taste in candles?
I guess you learn something new every day. Needless to say, we didn't spend $50 on the candle I picked out, and found the full lot of them for this project for around $30 at Target — and that's where Mary's shopping skills come in handy.
Once the project was complete, it turned out to be a really cold, icy day here in Richmond when we set out to photograph the final shots of the lanterns. We ended up walking over to Monument Avenue to set them up along a picturesque brick walkway and wondered what people driving by us must have thought as I snapped away. Here I am in full on spiderman-photog mode trying to capture the perfect shot of these guys (which ended up being the first photo in this post):
You gotta do what you gotta do to get the pic, am I right? All in a day's work...
Question — Where do you find the best priced candles?
Find the full tutorial with step-by-step instructions for making a set of your own lantern in our latest project post for eHow.
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