Innovative lamp

I have been more than excited to add my new post. It’s the festive month of October -Diwali  the season of light making  its  presence felt.  brightly lit lamps, diyas and variety of sweets is something that you cant take your   eyes off  if crossing a market lane . Innovations are bound to happen when you have a vision and this time it was Veena Picardo who came to me with this brilliant idea of making an innovative lamp 

We have this bougainville plant surrounding our college compound and one day the gardener was busy conditioning the plants. He had cut the old dried twigs out  for the plant to branch again.

It  was veena  to  visualize creativity in those dried sticks which were soon to be  part of  a heart warming lamp. If you have to make a similar lamp you could use any dried sticks that would be flexible enough to take a shape. 

I collected twigs of different sizes and tied each twig into a sphere shape with the coir yarn to give a rustic look. I managed to make 10 rings of different sizes. If you would be using the same plant for the lamp be careful with the sticks as the plant has really sharp thorns. To maintain the dried sticks and for a glossy finish I used a mix of varnish and brown color powder and applied it with a paint brush. All this material is easily available in any Hardware Store.

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Its important to have small to large size of spherical rings as it becomes easy to entangle them in each other to give a circular shape. 

For hanging the lamp thought of using the coir yarns again. Made a rope  plait out the yarns and got it colored with  the varnish mix.  

You need to rest the rings and rope so that the varnish dries out completely. It may take a day for the varnish to dry completely.

Assembling the lamp:

As the design of the lamp is abstract a perfect  spherical shape was not desired. As the bouganvilla plant dry sticks had thorns it was easy to entangle the rings among each other. If you use different kind of dry stick then use the coir yarn to hold the circular structure. After completion the sphere looks something like this. 

To illuminate the lamp I  have used  Chinese rice lighting which was properly arranged only inside the lamp. 

                                   

The thorns on the dry sticks served as attachment for the lighting wire to form a shape.

After the lighting was lit the lamp looked something like this

I wanted to add life to this abstract creation so used the artificial  flower creepers which are easily available in the local market. Starting from the rope the flower vine was set on the sphere in a " S" shape.

The green color added freshness and life to lamp. This lamp  when lit in the dark looks like a cluster of fire flies in  a dense green forest!

  

Happy dusshra to all  of you ! 

See you soon in my next post.