The Glass Top: A DIY Project to Create a Unique Light Fixture

As I stood in front of my glass top, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and uncertainty. I had an idea to create a unique light fixture by attaching a ring-shaped glass piece to the top of the table, creating a little more space between the glasses. However, I was concerned about the potential issue of seeing the ring in the glass when the lights were on.

To address this concern, I decided to use a plastic container with a clear top to create a makeshift " bumper" that would prevent the ring from being visible. I cut out the bottom hole and glued the lid to the top of the glass piece, making sure it was secure. To add an extra layer of protection, I applied a bead of glue to the crevice where the lid met the glass.

I then moved on to check if my base was dry before proceeding with wiring the light fixture. Satisfied that everything was in order, I began to wire my own light using a chandelier bulb-sized light fixture. I carefully inserted the cord and threaded it through the base, leaving some room at the bottom for comfortable installation.

As I worked on attaching the shade over the threaded rod, I realized that I needed an LED bulb specifically designed for glass and paint, as regular bulbs would not work well with these materials. I decided to test my fixture with a temporary bulb before moving on to more permanent options.

After completing the wiring process, I turned off the light and stepped back to admire my handiwork. The result was stunning - two unique and functional light fixtures that added a touch of elegance to any room. To finish off the project, I applied a coat of yellow paint to the wooden bead filled with wood filler, which I had previously sanded smooth.

As I looked around my creation, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. The glass top had transformed into a one-of-a-kind light fixture that showcased its unique design elements. If you're feeling adventurous and want to try your hand at DIY lighting projects, I encourage you to give this idea a try.

To take it to the next level, I decided to add some decorative touches to my finished lights. Using spray paint, I created a beautiful, metallic finish on one of the fixtures, giving it a touch of luxury that was hard to resist. The end result was breathtaking - two stunning light fixtures that added a touch of sophistication to any room.

As I looked at my finished creations, I couldn't help but think about the possibilities. With a little creativity and some basic DIY skills, you can transform ordinary objects into extraordinary works of art. Whether you're looking to add some ambiance to your home or create a unique piece for your next party, this project is sure to inspire.

If you enjoyed watching me make these lights, be sure to check out my other videos where I share more DIY projects and home decor inspiration. From mushroom lamps to checkered rugs, I'm always excited to share new ideas with my audience. Until next time, stay creative and keep on crafting!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys Rachael here and I want to talk to you about something I have just been absolutely loving  these mid-century modern Scandinavian lights the first one I want to talk about is this  pendant light and this is called the PH5 pendant light by Poul Henningsen in 1958 I believe now  when you take a look at this pendant light it pretty much just looks like a bunch of plates  and bowls all stacked together and I feel like there's got to be an easy DIY solve for this  the next light I want to mention is this flower pot lamp now this is designed by Verner Panton  in 1967 and apparently it was inspired by peace and love and the flower power era of the 60s I  love the aesthetic of both of these lights but what I don't love so much is the price  point so I'm hopefully going to DIY them for a lot less let's go so I want to start with  the flower pot light I feel like it's going to be a bit more challenging I have a loose  plan for both of these lights but stick around for the ride because like I said they're looseearlier this morning I stopped by Ikea because I noticed on their website they have these really  great hemisphere Dome shaped bowls and I'll show you what I got so first I found this and I believe  this is called the Blanda Bowl this one is eight inches in diameter and it was only 4.99 Canadian  so this is good for our top shade part and then I found this bowl and I thought this bowl would  be really good for the base of our lamp this is the Blanda blank Bowl this one is only five  inches in diameter and I believe it was 3.99 Canadian so we're off to a great start for our  middle portion of the light and this is where we start to see the flower pot style coming in  so I actually found this at the thrift store this is a globe glass vase and I always see a  lot of vases in this style I'm sure you can find them on Amazon if you don't see one second hand  I literally found this for a dollar ninety nine uh it still has a tag on it because I think I was  planning to put a cactus in here that Cactus has since passed away and how do you kill it Cactus um  we don't have to talk about that also on so on our way home from Ikea I stopped by the hardware  store to get lamp components I want both these lights to be fully legit functioning lights so  I grabbed these threaded rods and these are just typical for lamp making kits I also grabbed a wire  and a fixture but we'll get to that stuff later so the lamp's gonna sort of be something like  threaded rod in our base threaded rod goes through our glass and then this sits on top  and it's something like this see if she's not you see it coming together  did you see something like this you know okay but let's start let's actually start so the first  thing I want to do is actually be able to thread my rod into the bottom of this glass globe and  into the top or I guess bottom of our aluminum bowl so I'm gonna need to drill some holes and  in order to drill into the glass I'm going to go in with this carbide drill bit so these drill bits  are actually designed to effectively drill holes into glass without cracking hopefullyplease don't break my glass that's why I have this right anyway and I just want  to make sure that I'm drilling this hole in the center of the bottom of my glassthe bit I'm using is 3 8 of an inch thick which is the same thickness as my threaded Rod I just  have my glass here on a silicone mat so it helps with any slipping and you want to hold your drill  perpendicular to the surface so I added water to the top of my glass to help keep the surface cool  as well as collect the glass dust now I encourage you to go really slowly with this step you want to  go slowly with your drill keep a consistent light pressure as it slowly grinds away at the glass  until you make it all the way through now I'm going to do the same process on the bottom center  of my aluminum bowl and instead of going in with a carbide drill bit I'm just going in with a regular  twist bit here I'm also going to drill a hole on the side of the bowl closer to the bottom so we  can deal with some cable management later on the hole in the side is a bit trickier so I'm going  to start off with a pilot hole and a scrap piece of wood before I go in with my bigger drill bitokay so the base is looking great now we're ready to start see the  lamp sort of coming together I'm going to take my threaded rod and  I'm going to twist it through the hole at the top that we just madeit kind of looks like a plungerwe'll get onto the glass in a little bit but obviously when we put the two glass pieces on  top we're gonna be fighting with the weight of the top versus the bottom so I didn't twist this  in all the way I put it in to about like where the bottom of this hole on the side is and I'm going  to fill this bowl with concrete and hopefully it will be enough to weigh down the bottom so to hold  this rod in place temporarily I'm going to put some washers on the top and at the bottom here  I'm just using this bag of Quikrete that I already had the ratio I'm using is about two  parts mixed to just under one part water I'm looking for an oatmeal consistencynow I'm gonna let this sit overnight to fully cure and Harden but it's looking good  now we have our concrete curing outside I'm ready to start painting our glass  pieces now I want to paint the inside of these so I'm going to tape on the outside  tada we got our Bowl all right let's go paint in a recent video Becky made  a mushroom style lamp and she found the best method for painting glasses to actually go in  with spray paint and work in really thin layers letting each layer dry in betweenokay I feel like we're at a bit of a standstill with the lamp so let's  move on to our pendant light and like I mentioned before this pendant light  just looks like a bunch of bowls and plates all stacked together so  another thing I picked up from Ikea this morning was this plug-in light fixture and I'll show you  what it looks like basically this and this is pretty much what we're going to build all of  our bowls around now I also already have this serving platter I'm pretty sure I got this at  the grocery store for like six dollars but I never use it and I also think it's a perfect  starting piece for us for you and I together to find the bows that we need for this lightyou get the dress but I definitely need a lot more bowls so in story  girls fashion I definitely want to try and find secondhand bowls when  I can so let's go to the thrift store and see what we can findokay so I definitely only want to use plastic bowls for this I think it'll  be a lot easier to drill holes into so they'll fit nicely on the fixture and I  think an important thing to mention here is just checking for things like scale as well  as like ratio to one another as well as the slopes of each plate and Bowlforeignwhy am I wearing jeans today I will not be wearing jeans tomorrow so I ended up  having to go to a couple different thrift stores but I am happy with the bowls I did  find I am having trouble finding like the innermost smallest Bowl I'm gonna  go test my look at the dollar store and I think that's it for today I'm gonna see  you guys at the office tomorrow and we're going to continue to work on these lightsforeignpants againI have my bowls that I found yesterday let me show you what I got  maybe I'll do a loose stack just so you get a better ideasomething like this in order for these two nicely fit around my fixture here I'm gonna  go in with a hole saw I don't think that this thread is going to be wide enough for  all verbals to stack upon it so I'm going to be using two different sizes as well I'm  going to use one three quarter inch so that it could fit around this shredded part and  then I'm going to do another size that is two inches wide so we'll nicely fit around  the top part of this fixture and this is which size I'm using on which bowls so now I'm going  to find Center at the bottom of each one of my plates and then run it with the whole sawbefore using the hole saw you want to prep up your plate or Bowl on a piece of scrap wood so  the drill bit in the middle of the hole saw has something to catch on to similar to the  carbide bit I used yesterday I want to go really slowly with my drill applying a constant and firm  pressure I let the bit take its time to grind away at the plastic and repeat this for all the bowls  okay all of our Bowls have holes they look great some are definitely cleaner than others  for example this bowl just started chipping away before I could do any real drilling  but it was fine because it had a score line so I was able to just use pliers and crack  away the excess I'm not really concerned about things like this though because it's  all going to be sandwiched on our fixture and speaking of it's time to put them onso this came in the fixture kit I'm just gonna use it as a screw capokay you know what I don't really love how this bowl and this plate are similar in  depth so I'm gonna add a little bumper so I have this little wooden ring I believe this  is left over from some curtain rings that we have in the office so thisokay yes I think this is the vibe to reinforce this whole thing I'm actually just gonna add a  little beads of hot glue between each plate just so that they kind of all stay togetherlook I'm really happy with how this has turned out last thing I really  need to do is give this whole thing a coat of spray paint I'm going in with  this kind of deep glossy cherry red and I think it's going to be perfectforeignlet's go back to our flower pot lamp and see how that's doing uh here's the base that we did  yesterday I mean it's nice and heavy definitely I feel good about this countering the weight of the  glass on top take a look at the inside so notice how I left a little bit of thread outside of the  concrete this is because I just want to throw a washer and a nut on the end here to kind of  keep it all held together that feels good okay so next I'm going to measure the length of this  threaded Rod so that I can figure out how long I want this piece of copper tubing to be that I'm  going to put over top of this and before I do that I want to take off this temporary nut that we hadstandbyI'll get that later okay just under 10 inches I want to leave about an inch extra of threaded  Rod at the top maybe just under so I'm going to cut down my copper to about nine inches  next I'm going in and I'm just going to trim this down with my pipe cutter to use a pipe cutter all  you have to do is tighten the blade all the way to your pipe and then alternate between twisting  the pipe as well as tightening the blade and eventually it will snap off nice and clean so the  idea here is that this copper pipe will go over here and then our glass will come down and this  copper pipe will actually be taking the weight of the top instead of having anything relying  on this threaded Rod see that oh it's just slowly coming together you know before I do anything else  so I'm going to give this piece and this piece a light sanding so we can prep it for spray painting  that will happen later we just want to create a more pore surface for the paint to hold on to so  now I want to go in with some glue I'm going in with some E6000 this is an industrial strength  adhesive it says do not get on skin or clothing do not breathe Keep Out Of Reach of children use only  a well ventilated area so I'm going to put some gloves and a mask on so I'm only going to put glue  on the inside of this copper tube so I can glue it to the bottom so this little piece came with  the threaded rods and I just thought it might be nice I don't know this is so extra if I could put  it in here and just kind of make that a little bit cleaner because I maybe um drilled the hole  to be the same width as this piece I maybe plan that early on maybe maybe you did maybe I didn'tafter I let the E6000 glue set up for a little bit I hit the base with some white  primer paint as well as going in with our lovely glossy yellow that we used yesterdayokay I really want that paint to dry fully before  I start handling the base again but let's take a look at our glasswareokay these look really good and oh let's imagine it for a sec okayguys it's so so cute so I want this glass top to be able to stand off of this a little bit  just to create a little bit more space between the glasses my concern with using something like  this and this literally is like the inside of a tape roll is that when the lights on you're  gonna see this ring in the glass and I don't want that so I have an idea and I have this  plastic container I had some takeout in here so same idea but luckily this is clear and it has a  clear top so I'm going to cut this in half cut out the bottom hole so I can put it over top obviously  you can definitely peel hot glue off of glass but this it still sticks really well so unless  you're really forcing it off which no one should ever really be I feel really good about this like  that's not going anywhere and then I'm gonna glue this lid to here and then I'm going to put a bead  of glue inside the crevice so the idea is that the glue is going to act like a bumper but it's  also going to help it has a little hold to it and then it will just sit on top of here okay  I'm ready to wire this light but let's go check on our base and see if it's dry yepthings are looking really good it's time to actually make this function as an actual light  so I'm just going to go in with the lighting cord as well as a fixture and I'm going to  wire my own light now I've rewired a couple ceiling lights in my day so I feel pretty  confident about basic electricity but if this is something that you want to try at home I would  just consult you know any electrician or make sure you do your homework so I'm actually going  in with a chandelier bulb size light fixture I just think it will fit better inside the glass  um this package is open it was the only one left so I hope it still works it does say  I can put it on a portable lamp um I will say though the basic idea here is that I'm  going to insert my cord and to here and then I can put it through the base hereoh yeah here we go see how I purposefully left some room at the bottom so that the cable can  comfortably sit in there so now I'm ready to put our shade over the threaded rod and this wireonly going to glue this glass to The Copper Rod but first I'm going to add my fixtureokay before I screw this in or glue this down or anything I just want to see if this is working I  definitely need to go pick up an LED bulb um because there's Glass and paint and plastic  here you don't want to use a regular bulb because it will get hot but let's just see what this onewith this you can go poop and it's gonna be like oh and then we'll be like ah and it's like yes  so let's turn this off after I'm done fixing this I think we're ready for my favorite part  I'm gonna go style both our lights and we can take a closer look oh and I almost forgot  earlier I filled half a wooden bead with wood filler and sanded that smooth as well  as gave it a coat of yellow so I could glue it to the top of the lamp to finish it offforeignokay guys honestly I can't believe how well these lights turned out if you do  give either of these a try make sure to share it with us and tag at the sorry girls and  if you enjoyed watching me make these today definitely check out that video I mentioned  earlier where Becky tried this mushroom lamp as well as a checkered rug see you next timeoh my goodness I don't think I've ever spray painted something so perfectly in my lifeum I feel more Gilded Age than anyone at the Met Gala was\n"