Improving Ikea for about a buck.

Ikea had a lighting sale, and I bought the TYFT wall lamp for $5 (usually $10). Its basically a square of plastic with a small bulb behind it with a wall mount. It comes with 4 interchangeable pieces of plastic to change the pattern or color which is kind of neat, but they still kind of bored me. The front is attached with a screw in each of the 4 corners, which makes it extremely easy to slip your own design over the front.
I scanned a photo I liked of my best friend Carla (who is in the May issue of Jane p. 50 by the way!), increased the contrast to the highest level in Photoshop, then took it to a copy store. I bought an 8.5x11 transparency for 25 cents, and had them print the photo on it in color (80 cents). Black and white would've looked good too. Then, I just cut down the transparency to a square, punched holes in the corners, and screwed the image into place. I made a few other transparencies of different photos in case I get bored of looking at Carla everyday.
Easiest project ever. I didn't even break out into an upper lip sweat.