I cropped this from a much larger photo I shot (at the Lego Architecture exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC) after my sister pointed out that this was happening in it.

Paris, France, October 12, 2009.

What is this spider trying to tell us?

Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, Japan, 3:30 pm, July 26, 2009.

The picture above shows a lamp I made from a plastic Ikea watering can (this particular model seems to have been discontinued… I couldn’t find it online) and an Ikea Vedum lamp.

The Vedum lamp looks like the picture below when it’s used as it’s supposed to be.

Here’s what I did:

(1)  sawed off the tip of the watering can with a hacksaw.

(2)  cut off two of the legs of the base tripod (couldn’t cut them all off because the wire runs through one of them and I didn’t want to risk damaging the rubber shielding).

(3) Pushed the fiber optic spray portion of the lamp through the spout, hiding the tripod inside the can.

(4) cut a hole for the power cord in the bottom of the can (in the photo the hole would appear at bottom right if it were visible).

(5) dropped a rock into the can to keep it from tipping over.

Crudely executed…. I’ve been meaning to make a nicer version of it for a long time but haven’t gotten around to it.

For more ideas about modifying existing Ikea products, check out ikeahacker.

And for possibly the funniest, coolest lamp of all time, check out the Doglamp, created by Karlssonwilker.

Crudely drawn in Google Sketchup…

I’d love to build one of these but don’t really know how to do the joinery in a way that would be sturdy enough.

I also don’t know Sketchup well enough to figure out how to get rid of the black triangles that are visible at the joints — those are not an intentional part of the design.

Comments welcome!

Tip of the hat to co-inventor John Gaitanis, M.D.