DIY Hobnail Lamp - Dear Lillie Studio

Good afternoon! I’ve got a whole lot of Christmas decorating to start sharing with you but first I wanted to share a little project I did in Lillie’s room – a DIY Hobnail Lamp. I stole the lamps that were in her room and used them in the guest bedroom (which I just officially finished up and fully photographed yesterday and can’t wait to share those photos as soon as I edit them), so that meant I needed some lamps for Lillie’s room. I should point out that the ones we moved were never intended for her room, they were a bit too formal and grown-up looking but we just used them temporarily in her room at the last house while we were searching for the right ones but then just kind of forgot about it and then when we moved they just moved right into her room again here although I did start looking for the right lamps then.

The problem was I really loved some of the dotted/hobnail style ones I kept coming across when I was searching and got my heart set on that look. They were all way out of the price range though that I wanted to spend but I kept hunting hoping I could find a dup. Unfortunately even the dupes were quite expensive so I started wondering if maybe I could try to DIY one. This lamp was my favorite one (it’s extremely expensive!), but I felt like the spheres were a bit too large for her taste and I was worried about how well glue would hold up larger ones that didn’t have as much of a surface covering the lamps so I decided to try to model mine closer to the look of this one.

To begin, I hunted on Facebook Marketplace and at some local consignment shops for two lamps with the right size base as my starting point. Unfortunately I kept striking out so I finally gave in and bought two lamp bases from Lowe’s that had the exact size and shape I wanted. I was nervous though because I had no idea if my plan was going to work to not and I preferred the idea of using a $3 second hand fine and I hated the idea of wasting money on a new lamp if I ended up ruining it. I decided to go for it though because I really had my heart set on this look, so I did them one at a time that way if the first one was a disaster I could just return the second one still in it’s packaging. Fortunately though it worked even better than I had hoped and so I did the second one as well!

Here is the base:

Next I used this Gorilla Glue Gel and glued these split wood spheres onto the lamp. I didn’t measure – I just kind of eyeballed it in a general pattern that I liked.

This is what it looked like when I had them all glued on.

Then I taped off the electrical parts and the silver base (which I later used some gold rub and buff on to make it go with her room better – although I forgot to take a picture of that part) and then went outside and spray painted the whole thing with this spray paint.

Then I added these adorable scalloped lamp shades that I found at our local outlet (so both of them together ended up being a little less than half off of what one is on their website) and there you have it, a DIY hobnail lamp: