A few years ago New Zealand-based Flickr photog fettucininz was looking for an easier way to position his flash for table top photography, when he found that his old desk lamp had just the right screw thread for mounting his flash. The resulting setup is ultra flexible and super cheap (it’s free, after all). If you have an old balanced-arm desk lamp lying around, see if you can repurpose the thing as a nifty flash stand.

Image credits: Photographs by fettucininz

If you have slides you’re planning on throwing away, why not upcycle them into a unique lamp shade? New York based artist and design Sabina Batelman did just that with hers.

Batelman tells us:

I was into slide photography some time ago and ended up with all these cutting room floor slides that were hard to throw away. Happily, the idea of the lampshade sort of came to me without much thought. Seemed like the most logical thing to do with them. Slides. Light. Need lampshade.

I used a few coats of thin green and brown acrylic paint. Though I’m experimenting now with thicker acrylics to eliminate the need for multiple coats. Keeping the paint off the images was a bit of pain at first, but I eventually got better at it. I bought a bunch of metal rings from the jewelry making department at Michael’s and used a power drill to make the holes. The frame is from a junky $2 lampshade bought from a local thrift store. I cut the shade off and hung the linked slides on. Pretty simple. A bit tedious, but quite therapeutic.

Making another one now. Have a lot of slides. Need more lampshades.