D20 inspired lamp
By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor
Iâm all about expressing my nerdy nature in my home dĂ©cor, but Iâm also all about making things as easy as possible. I hate home projects, but I hate paying inflated Etsy prices for geeked out furniture and household items even more. So you better believe that when I found out that there are nerdy IKEA hacks, I was all over thatâand this project is no different!
For one of the most basic DIYs youâll need an IKEA âJoxtorpâ pendant lamp shade ($4), and a lamp cord kit. Now you can buy these lamp cord kits at IKEA as well, but theyâre cheaper at any hardware store, so just make a quick stop at Canadian Tire or Rona on your way home.
The lampshade itself already looks like a 20-sided dice, so whether you want to paint it or keep it as the pale green hue it comes in is completely up to you. Just keep in mind that this is a lamp shade, so youâll need to use screen printing paint to avoid streaks. Or you can go really wild and simply recover the shade, piece by piece, in a fabric. I would suggest doing this if you have a particular design or pattern youâre fond of.
The only problem with this is that the lamp shade actually has 30 sides, so you canât faithfully re-create a D20, but if you have someone over who feels the need to point this out, just kick them out of your houseâtheyâre not really your friend anyway.
The next step is to just start numbering the sides. Because this will never be a faithful re-creation, you can do this in any way you want. I used a number stencil and a sharpie as per the original image I saw of this on the Our NERD Home blog, but if you want to get fancy with it and free-hand it then I say go for it. There are some amazingly beautiful elf-inspired dice I may use as inspiration if I were to do this again.
From then on the project is pretty simple. Just insert the socket and bulb, and hang your new nerd lamp where ever you like!
