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Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Creative problem solving



When building our house, one of the most time consuming choices for us was light fixtures. Our architect drew our house as a "new old house" and so there are very few can lights (they are only in the basement playroom). So, we had to pick out lights for the entire house - it was a lot of lights. I spent hours on websites and even more hours at lighting showrooms - but I loved every minute of it!

One of the things that jumped out at me immediately and in fact I asked every lighting salesperson I met how to solve this problem - was what to do about the ugly fake wax candle sleeves(often with really drippy fake wax, like Disney world - yucky). I began to notice the ugly ones everywhere - in showrooms, in my own house, in magazines, online. One salesperson referred me to Lamp Arts on Howell Mill, they sell fake beeswax covers that look better than the drippy wax ones. I even googled candle covers and didn't get much of a result (this was in 2007).

What I don't like:


And then one day in the Fall of 2008 my google search revealed a treasure - Kaarskoker. Created by April Pride Allison, Kaarskoker means candle cover in Dutch. The next month I read about them in House Beautiful magazine. It was the answer to my candle sleeve problem.

Please check out the website (warning, I spend hours on this site looking at all of the choices!)for all of the options and many photos, even before and after. Here are some teasers:

from the kaarskoker website:





From my own house:









Couldn't resist this last one from the kaarskoker website:


What a great way to add a punch of color, or a touch of whimsy!

2 comments:

  1. Thank goodness we didn't have the Internet when we had to make lighting decisions. We had 2 pros say, "Terry we'll pick them out and try to stay withing your lighting allowance." Otherwise we'd still be making up our minds.

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  2. I've always been a bit leery of the plastic candles too. That's a great find with the various sleeve options.

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