Shining Some Light

I've always been a huge fan of the look of bare, hanging light bulbs.

Back in high school, I had to put together a "senior art show" at the end of my senior year. I needed to create a display to showcase all of my artwork from that year using a couple of huge, wooden, foldable boards. For the display, I had this elaborate plan of somehow suspending a bunch of functioning light bulbs over my artwork. It was supposed to be moody, striking, and just flat-out cool. However, due to my lack of know-how and funds, my elaborate idea culminated into painting some light bulbs yellow (haha..) and hanging those instead. So years later, when I decided to make a floating shelf/nightstand, I thought that I might have a second stab at somehow making that plan a reality... in the form of a bedside light.

The nightstand turned out to be a pretty simple and straightforward project. I snagged a board of reclaimed elm wood from a local salvage yard (that's the short story, anyway) that I then coated with a few coats of polyurethane. I debated staining the wood a darker color, but I decided that the color of the natural wood was a nice contrast against some of the other tones in the bedroom. I also picked up some pretty basic shelf brackets from a hardware store that I spray painted black. I mounted those to the wall, and that was it! 

As far as light fixture itself goes, I followed in the footsteps of some great tutorials here and here, so I won't go into much detail about the process.

I'm really digging the result! It adds an informal but interesting element to the room, and the light bulb gives off a nice relaxing glow when it's on.