Adorable Handmade Whale Lamp

This Lamp took me a whole entire day to construct. First, I purchased the whale from a local art show for $29. Then, I found a plaque at the craft store ($1.98) which I first painted white, then painted black to use as the base. I drilled a hole through the center of it then a wider one on the bottom side to house the nut fitting. Then I tried to burrow out a place for the cord to sit but, that just shredded the pine. (Don't look at the underside of this lamp it's a mess. I used the threaded pole in the lamp section and bolted that to the base. That kit is about $8. Well, I didn't want the whale to set on an ugly threaded pole so I used copper piping which I cut myself with a hand saw, a copper coupling on the bottom to make it more attractive, and 2 copper pipe mounts to attact the whale to the copper pipe. All the copper was around $10. Then I used a standard lamp kit ($8) to run the wiring. From the fancy lighting store the lamp shade I wanted fortunately was on sale from a whopping $90 to a still pricey $49. Also they had adorable finials. I picked this adorable whale finial up for $18. I wasn't able to adequately drill the hole for the wire to rest on so for $3 at the hardware store I picked up some self adhesive rubber feet for the bottom so that the lamp sits perfect on the dresser.

So now I have a lamp that I made myself but stil cost at least $130. But, I just couldn't bring myself to pay $50-75 for some junky lamp made in china from the baby stores that really weren't that cute.