This DIY Flower Lamp Will Make You Feel Like A Fairy In Your Own Home

So by now we've learned that unicorns nor fairies are real. We need some childlike wonder in our lives, please. Welcome some magic back into your life by converting a workaday lamp into a glowing oversized flower. With a bit of paper, wire, spray paint, floral tape, and a glue gun, whip up a design like Instagrammer @johannasdiys. An assemblage of about five painted, wire-enforced petals, a green paper stamen and pistil, and a streamer-wrapped stem come together to make a glowing floral light feature. Top it off with a safe cool-to-the-touch LED bulb, and this addition to your home will appeal to people ages 4 to 44 and beyond in a safe way.

Let this project be a jumping-off point for more garden-themed illumination. You can give a lamp a stunning makeover in many blooming ways — bedeck a table lamp, a pendant lamp cord, or anything else you can dream up. In the meantime, here's how you can create your whimsical, fairy-like flower lamp.

For this DIY, purchase white crepe paper like this option from Paper Mart for just over $2, florist wire, scissors, and a glue gun. Buy one can of light yellow spray paint and several rolls of 4-inch-wide light green paper streamers — one may be enough, but it's safer to have extra. For lamps, IKEA's SKAFTET lamp has a curved base for a stem-like look, but a swing arm lamp could be just as cute.

Create a petal pattern on a standard piece of printer paper; free-hand a lobed design like @johannasdiys and cut it out. Cut five pieces of floral wire to create a structural "skeleton" for your petal, then use five thin trips of crepe paper to cover your supports. Repeat this five times to make five petals. Roll each petal to crinkle the paper, unroll, and spray the bases with yellow paint so that the color is graduated from base to lobe.

Remove the shade of your lamp (if it came with one), and measure the circumference of your lamp socket. For the flower's stamen and pistil, you can make a little crepe paper "crown" that fits around the socket, and spray paint it green with white ends. For a more realistic look, make 2-inch cuts, 1 inch apart along the streamer "crown." Twist each cut section into a stick shape (the stamens), and slightly roll the end. Spray the cut bits with yellow spray paint. 

Wrap the lamp stand with the green streamers, gluing as you go, until you've covered it from the socket to the base. This is the stem of the flower. Screw in a cool-to-the-touch LED bulb, turn it on, and bask in the floral light. If a table lamp is better for your space, try a miniature version of this DIY. Or, take advantage of unused space by hanging your lighting. Floralize a pendant light by turning your flower into a hanging paper pendant. Apply the decorations to the socket, cover the cord, and suspend it over any spot needing a dose of joy. For all the renters who can't leave holes in their ceilings for a hanging light, employ a damage-free chandelier hanging hack using a hanging light fixture cord set and a zip tie.

If you're interested in putting your own take on this lamp, swap out colors, petal shapes, and paint. Pick a blossom in your favorite color, either in nature or in your imagination. Some flowers like the campanula bellflower with inverted blooms are not only lovely, but they also boast a copy-worthy form that would work on downward-hanging lampshades. Cover the existing shade with spade-shaped purple paper petals, and bend the wire up and out to mimic their outward curving look. Let some paper "leaves" grow from the stem. Follow the same basic instructions you used for petals, and paint the leaves green. Affix them with glue before wrapping the lamp tube in the green streamer material.