All Blog Posts Tagged 'DIY' (10)

First of all, this is not a guide but notes for my self, that hopefully others might find useful. Stuff you find here might already have been described elsewhere on this site.

First the basics

What makes the lava lamp flow is basically the liquid solution being made correctly for the specific wax your lamp uses. In other words, you might not be able to take one liquid from one lamp,…

Whew! this post has been a loooooooooooong time coming.

Well, as many of you know, I've been working on making custom punched glitter, ever since I first saw that WaMu lamp and bought it on ebay...the one with the house-shaped glitter flakes. That lamp infected me with an idea!

It's taken me a lot of time, effort, and money, but I'm finally close to being able to take custom cut glitter orders...but with a disclaimer.

So ok, first things first...

After trying all…

On a hunch, I decided to try and spray some stripper onto an UNpainted lamp. I just couldn't figure out why in the world only the inside of the cap anodised! I knew why the base didn't, and that's because I didn't connect the power correctly, but the cap? My friend who is helping me said something about aluminum being pre-anodised sometimes in order to seal it to keep it from oxidizing...but how did they anodise it without getting ALL of it? There must be something sprayed on…

Yay! My power supply finally came! It was the fourth one, and hopefully the last. As soon as I opened it, though...my heart sank. The bottom of the unit was so bowed out that it wouldn't sit flat on the table. The face place sits very loosely on the front, and the metal cover is warped! Worst thing about it is, the box was completely un-dented. Whomever packed my power supply saw it in that state, and packed it anyway. I could have screamed.

But instead I mashed the bowed bottom back…

Finally!

And now I can offer a much more definitive list of colors that will be available. :) All of these can be varied from light to dark, but here is the list of default colors:

Red

Orange

Tangerine

Yellow

Green

Forest…

It's just for practice, you understand...and since this lamp wound up being free, I just took it apart and learned how to replace the cord easily for painting or anodizing. :)

The first image is the way it arrived, then I (finally) got the top and cap off, stored the yellow glitter, and put a fluorescent blue/blue gookit. I still haven't rewired it yet though,…

Yay. :) Slowly but surely, I'm building up the colors I need. Spray paint is expensive. @_@

That's crimson, orange, and yellow gloss, metallic gunmetal, and metallic bronze. :) That brings my metallic colors up to 8, and the…

I just sealed the deal today. :) I signed the contract, and paid for the lamps with shipping included, all at once. I've bought cars...I've bought computers...I've never dropped that much cash at once before. :-/ Wow. Surreal. Better start selling some of these soon!

But I'm celebrating tonight. :) It's finally paid! the ball is finally set in motion. I think it's supposed to get here in 35 days? Most of that is in transit...I think they said it would be 28 days at sea? That means…

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find spray paint around here. Seriously. A lot of places don't even carry it any more because of all the kids huffing it. :( Sad.

...And rather frustrating for me! I need that crap for like...you know...what it was INTENDED for? Anyway, here's what I've managed to find so far! That's red, blue, royal blue, purple, gold, and black...all metallic. :) The Krylon says it's safe up to 600 degrees F, but the other one says only 200. I think that kind…

I threatened to do it...and here it is. :p

Anyway, this will be a repository of things related to my ongoing modding efforts, and maybe I'll be able to update it as I go. I guess I'll go ahead and repost this:

I ordered 100 lamps to mod, and that's what they will look like...only they will be plain, silver aluminum when they arrive, with smaller silver…