cheap lights: soda crate lamp

a bigger place means some more room and unfortunately more things.  i am really trying to make it be as little and as cheap as possible though, limiting it to the things we REALLY need.-i am going to post over the next 2 months of solutions and projects that i have been working on that tries to accomplish these things.

one of the first things i noticed we needed was lighting in the living room, it has a dark corner and unlike our previous place, no ceiling lights, so we will need some sort of lighting solution to have proper light during the evening.
at first i was going to buy a few of those paper lanterns from IKEA, but . however, will searching the site GreenUpGrader, i saw this post on furniture from old shopping carts which got me thinking...

(furniture from Shelton Davis via GreenUpGrader)

i few weeks ago, i wrote about the Pop Shoppe bottles that we had. well,  i also had a bright red plastic crate that some of them came in-what a cute lamp that would be right!  then i remembered that several months ago i saved an image (i forgot where-sorry!) of this sweet light:

so now i know EXACTLY what i want to do!

-first thing was to was salvage the crate-it was very dirty and needed a little TLC.
-now the light part...again IKEA to the rescue.  they have these great light attachments that are really made for the paper lanterns, but i brought the crate in one evening and checked it out-and it fits! 
- i think the hardest part of this project was figuring out the how to make it balance without looking all rickety  and cheap...i want it to look sturdy not junky. while looking through some things from the move, i realized that i had this awesome little kit from-yes-IKEA, that was filled with little do-dads for speaker wires, home entertainment organizing (PS: this is a mist-have staple for any home).

(this +)

(this equals...)

-a couple ties and secures, proper hanging with the help of friends in the perfect dark corner and BAM!

total cost= $5