New living room light

New living room light

We have a new ceiling light in the living room! FINALLY! It’s the Ikea Maskros “dandelion” light, which, of course, we DIYed gold.

Here’s what the room looked like before and immediately after painting it from pink to white, and you can see the dinky light we had originally:

Here’s what the living room looks like now:

After looking high and low for years, we kept coming back over and over to the Ikea Maskros. It met all of our criteria for size, shape, an interesting design, a conversation starter… but it’s not exactly unique. Being from Ikea means every 10th person in the world has this light, or has seen this light, or knows someone who has this light. And a quick internet search for DIY projects for it will show hundreds of results. But at only $50 for a 22″ light that otherwise meets all of our criteria? Well, it’s kind of a no-brainer.

Since the Maskros is white, our first call of duty was to make it gold. Besides that I just love gold, the white would have blended into the white walls and ceiling. This light is made up of 84 little white wax paper “petals” that attach to some metal wires that connect to a plastic mounting plate at the top. I started by first cutting down all of the petals by about 1.5 inches because I wanted the petals to be a little smaller, less crowded and allow more light to come through. Then I painted the front and back of every gosh-darn little petal using Martha Stewart craft paint in gold on the front and a mix of gold and yellow gold on the back. I liked the idea of there being some dimension in the shades of gold so it would look a little aged, more like metal and less like paper. Painting all those stinkin’ little petals was really, really annoying. It took me about two weeks to finish them all. Then I spray painted the rest of the metal and plastic bits with gold Rustoleum.

We didn’t like how the ceiling plate looked when it was spray painted, though — pretty much just like a piece of plastic that happened to be gold. So this is where we got a little creative. I decided to try gold leafing! It was my first time using gold leaf and I am addicted. I want to gold leaf everything now! We used Martha Stewart gold leafing and adhesive from Michael’s. It’s very easy: 1. Brush on gold leaf adhesive all over. 2. Cut small pieces of gold leaf sheeting, press them onto the glue and peel away the wax paper backing. 3. When the whole thing is covered in gold leaf, use a foam brush to wipe away the excess. All of the little pieces that aren’t touching glue will just fall away. 4. And that’s it! So easy and it looks a million times better. I love how the gold leaf gives it tons of dimension and the light reflects off it beautifully. It really looks antique now and not so plastic. It looks amazing with all of art in old gold frames.

We love our new gold dandelion light! I think it’s really exactly what this room needs, and with a little elbow grease we were able to make it more us and less like just another light from Ikea. Adding a ceiling medallion also really helps to elevate this inexpensive light into something that looks like it belongs in this old house. We’ll have more details about the ceiling medallion in another post soon.

I’m starting to really love this room. We’ve hung some art and added some decorative touches, like when I spent an entire day lugging books from boxes in the attic down two flights of stairs, arranging them all in height order, then figuring out the massive puzzle of getting them to fit perfectly in the shelves. But it was worth it. I like the bright colors from the book spines, and that most of our books are kind of silly (like all my hockey books!).

This still isn’t a room we’ll spend a ton of time in, but we do sit here from time to time to read… and the cats LOVE the chair. We keep an old blanket on it to collect all the cat hair, like in the picture below with Trixie. Also, that plant is a placeholder, borrowed from the bathroom, until we get a bigger one. Andy hates that plant stand but I have been in love with those crystal “danglies” my whole life and it’s one of my favorite old things. He’s stuck with it.

We really like mixing old and new, antique and Ikea, which is a huge part of our style, so this room is a great example of that, especially with the new light. Since we can see into the living room from the couch and the dining room table, I often like to just sit and admire it… Wait, do other people do that? 🙂

Resources:
pendant light: Ikea gold lamp: Target

polka dot lampshade: DIY
marble coasters: DIY

face bud vase: Jonathan Adler
curtains: Target rug: CB2 large metal arrow: Cleveland Flea mirror with blue frame: vintage from the Country Living Fair in Columbus

gold pig book ends: CB2

silver owls: West Elm small wooden vase: bought on a trip to Newfoundland small wooden inukshuk: from Ottawa gold pillows: Target

black and white pillow: Ikea

flower pot: vintage from the Country Living Fair in Columbus globes: vintage (one was my mom’s when she was little, another was a gift from our accountant, ha)

gray arm chair: Ikea
everything else: antique family heirlooms