Finn’s room has been done for quite some time, but the one thing we never got around to doing was updating his light fixture.  Finn’s was a builder’s special and hideous.  But, the light fixtures that I like are expensive…  I hate boob lights and they are seemingly the only affordable flushmount in the world.  Which is why we ended up DIYing a light fixture for him.  We had a lot of fun making his pin map, and this seemed like a logical direction to go in for his overhead lighting.

We started with a cheapie setup from Home Depot; a 4″ glass shade holder and a 8″ glass globe; which set us back about $15 total.  The holder got a nice coat of oil-rubbed bronze spray paint (which was from previous projects).

We had silver and black vinyl lying around from a project that Nathan had dreamed up (and still has yet to come to fruition – surprise!).  I printed out a world map and got to cutting out each continent out of black vinyl.  I attached the landmasses to the vinyl with double stick tape and then got busy with my handy little embroidery scissors.  (A gift from my mom on my 21st birthday; proving that I had a mean DIY streak even then.)  I’m sure black contact paper would look just as good.

I eyeballed it for the continent to globe ratio… This globe aint going to win any cartography awards.  I started with North America, and by the time I got to Antarctica, I had to shrink it down to a quarter of its actual size.  And it is still swimming distance to Chile and Australia.  Little did you know arctic conditions now exist in South America.  Penguins have been spotted in Argentina.

Once the continents were cut out (Russia in three pieces), I got to sticking and smoothing.  Wrapping a round object in a flat sticker is a pain, and it didn’t turn out perfect by any means.  There is a healthy crease through the middle of Africa and Russia is a major cluster fuck; I’m sure there is a meaningful political allegory in there somewhere.

But once it was up, even Russia’s problems weren’t noticeable.

I cut a compass rose out of the silver vinyl (in 12 separate pieces) and we stuck that up first.  Nathan whipped out the compass on his phone to make sure north was really pointing north.  This, ladies and gents, is why I married the man.

Nae wired in the freshly painted fixture and we loaded it up with a CF bulb.  I’m not sure how wonderfully the vinyl countries would hold up to the heat if we had an incandescent in there.  Once the shade was on, all that was left to do was touch up the little screws that held the globe in place with some black paint.

Finn has informed me that “I sure do like my new globe, Mom.  But I’m mad at Dad for taking away my Legos and I’m not telling him that I like it.”  So that is a plus, I suppose.  Even if we would have had to buy all the supplies we used, I doubt we would have spent more than $25.  Which about the cost of two fugly cheapie light fixtures.

It is ten times better than that ugly mushroom lamp that was up there to begin with.  And two hundred and twelve times better than a boob light.