A record of Lighting Line With Shades Of Light

Let us talk about some Shady Business. You know the $herdog in me hoped to make that title a Slim Shady reference, right? Anyway, we have in fact been working on a secret project for over 14 months and we at last get to spill the beans. Jazz hands do not even begin to cover it. See, back in October 2011 Shades of Light asked us to assist them design a lighting collection. And we said “who, us?” swiftly followed by a “yes please!”

When it came to our goals, we truly hoped to keep things casual, playful, glad, and – the biggest challenge – within our budget. Which broke down to keeping the whole collection under $99. There are even $3 add-on items to spice up the lamps that you already have (you know we enjoy using what you’ve got). But keeping prices under that $99 mark (especially on larger lights, like chandeliers that are 2 feet wide) was a tall order. Shades of Light sells a ton of fancy $400+ designs, but they were amazingly willing to get all hands on deck to inch prices as low as possible without compromising quality, and we ENJOY them for that. It was hard to mash all of the lights our bundles of joy into this post, so you can click here to browse our full collection of shades, pendant lights, and decorative add-ons.

Not only do side gigs like this assist us provide for our family, they are some of the most exciting work that we get to do (you know when we are not juggling house projects, journal posts, book stuff, and playing with The Bean and The Burgs). Switching gears keeps us creative and it is consistently lively to try something new, so projects like this are the icing on the Hands-on cake. Well, playing with Clara & Burger land in that category too. Which is fitting because these lights are sort of like our babies.

Here are a few “studio shots” of some of our children. The apples of our eye. Picture us grinning like proud parents watching their child play “Tree #2” in the elementary school play.

That is not all of them, so here is the whole collection for ya. The coolest thing about this collaboration is that Shades of Light is based right here in Richmond, so it was a local affair. They came over to our house and we dropped by their headquarters a bunch of times over the course of the last year to draw sketches, look at prototypes, sample paint colors, see the products in action, and even shoot them in our own home for their online shop and their catalog.

Which means many of the lights are made/wired/painted right here in good ol’ Virginia! But of course they ship ’em nationally on their site in case you are not a local (you can even call them for overseas shipping rates). So… woot! It is fairly exciting to think that our babies are going to be making little pilgrimages to other cities across the country. Well, assuming people buy them. Haha.

As for Clara’s job, she played the role of quality control. When we asked her to pick her go-to one of the folks in the photo above, she kept changing her mind. She’s like her momma. She wants to rub her face on all of them.

The most exciting part of the whole process was when we at last got to shoot some of the wrapped up lights in our house back in November (right between two book tour stops) to see how they looked “in situation” and to use some of those images for the Shades Of Light catalog. This is a farmhouse pendant that comes in a bunch of glad colors. Does not the pink one look sweet when it is fake-hanging over our the sink?

How did we fake it? Well, see the green-shirted guy on the stool in our kitchen? He in fact held the mercury glass pendant that hangs over our sink out of the shot while they snagged a picture of the pink one that you see in the photo above (clamped to a rod above the sink so it appeared to be hard-wired there). It was our kinda shoot. Grass roots and plenty of laughing.

Here is another shot to show the magic of in-house photoshoots. See that giant reflector in the foreground and those three lights all clamped up to a rod that was later cropped out of picture? It is so funny how we look at catalogs like Pottery Barn and think “oh man those rooms are so remarkable and clean” – but in reality they must look at least this crazy from afar, thanks to all of the magical behind-the-scenes gear.

Here is how those drum pendants in fact looked in the photographer’s final shot. Oh and spoiler alert, we picked up the scallop pendant in the middle. We could not resist. We are in fact planning to hang it right in the window that you see here.

And remember the chandelier that we gave you a sneak peek of in Monday’s holiday post? Yup, it is part of our collection. He’s one of our go-tos.

We picked up it as soon as the catalog shoot wrapped up in our house. At $89 for such a large chandelier (it is two feet wide!) we thought it was a strong deal, and it looks excellent with the oil-rubbed bronze glass pendants over our nearby peninsula. It also comes in a bunch of other colors beyond the rusty bronze finish that we went with (they are painted locally in colors like plum, dark teal, white, black, gray, and red by an excellent lighting artisan).

One of the coolest “special effects” from it are the shadows that it casts on the ceiling if you use a clear bulb (if you do not enjoy them you can use a frosted bulb for a softer look).

And you know Burger is our muse, so… this happened. Yup, dude has his own chihuahua-riddled shades in a bunch of colors. We hoped things to be flexible for someone who might simply want a shade for a table lamp or floor lamp that they already have, so we asked Shades of Light to sell the shades alone as well as with a wrapped up pendant kit for hanging them (the full pendant kit even comes with a ceiling canopy, so it is all ready to hang). People gotta have options. And chihuahua shades.

And see those sculptural white metal diffusers under each of these geometric-ish ikat shades? Those were another add-on that we thought could spice up someone’s life light. Say you already have a pendant light at home but want a little more flair – one of these (in either the hex pattern or the quatrefoil pattern) can certainly up the ol’ lighting ante.

We enjoyed adding small (and inexpensive) Hands-on options, like these $3 add-ons. They are in short decals (fancy word: appliques) that we thought would be lively on a lamp base that you might already own (or one you could score at a thrift store and spray paint in a solid color). So whether you are into a white, black, or yellow bee shape; a go-to number in black or white; or even scalloped patterns that you can use alone or layer like crazy, you are covered. Cannot you see a big white #7 on a navy lamp base? Or a white bee on a cheery yellow gourd lamp?

And now for a Burger story. Remember way baaack when we posted this picture of Burger for Thanksgiving in 2011? Well, that half-loaf of Panera bread that he snuck off with was in fact from one of our first meetings for this project. The Shades of Light team was over at our house and we were excitedly talking about colors, fabrics, and shapes when Burger snuck ONTO THE DINING TABLE and grabbed it without any of us seeing him until it was way too late. Sneaky little bugger. It was the first and last time he had such brazen food-stealing confidence. Thank goodness. Simply look at the regret in those big brown eyes…

So that ends our little 14-months-in-the-making collection o’ lights, shades, & add-ons. Oh and to anyone who is not right now shopping for lighting or does not have any money to spend, we also hoped this collection would inspire the DIYers out there – perhaps simply to paint a metal pendant or lamp base that you already have – or even to make little personalized decals to spice up a lamp base in some personal way.

And now for some gushy enjoy for you all. We’d never be “here” without you, and for that we are eternally grateful. To think that this all began with one little journal post back in 2007 is crazytown, and we are so grateful to you folks for making it possible. Oh heck, you folks are like our babies too. Come to momma, I feel a hug coming on…