In this monologue, designer and French bakery owner Brenna Shea shares her passion for upcycling thrifted and ReStore finds into one‑of‑a‑kind lighting fixtures and home décor. She explains how she sources inexpensive glass pieces, drills holes to create lamp bases, and selects or customizes lampshades using hot glue, paint, and unique finials. She describes assembling colorful ceramic elements—drilled, stacked, and rearranged—to form distinctive lampshades, and repurposing furniture hardware to give pieces a fresh, quirky look. Throughout, she emphasizes affordability, creativity, and the joy of making functional art that makes people smile.
Chapters
Just flat out fun. I'm Brenna Shea. I am a designer by trade, and I am probably the ReStore's biggest fan. I have a French bakery. We're just opening our 4th in Atlanta. I have a lot of things to purchase for I love to take objects, drill holes in them, and make light fixtures out of them. I can make lamps, I can make chandeliers. This piece is wonderful. A couple reasons I like it, I'm always looking for a piece of glass that has a hole drilled in it. If you took this to a glass shop, a piece of glass, and wanted a hole drilled, it would probably be about $100. This table is $15. I love the colors. So this is really a good bargain. I'm looking for a lampshade for the lamp we just picked out. This is the exact shape I would want, because like I said, it mimics the shape of the lamp and the glass. My second choice is this shade. I'm probably going to hot glue trim over it or even paint it. Then I'm gonna put an amazing finial on top. I stripped everything off of it. So I'm left with this pole in the center. I've taken some ceramic pieces that I've just found at random thrift stores, or that I had on hand, or whatever, and I've drilled holes in the bottom. And I'm just going to start randomly stacking things up. I may take it apart once or twice before I get it exactly like I want it. And I remember picking this up at the ReStore. We're going to put this back on. It's going to be our tabletop. Then I will turn it on its side and run the wire through it and put a socket on it, and I'll have a lamp. And it's colorful and it's fun, and you're not gonna see one like it anywhere else. Anything you can drill a hole in, in my opinion, you can make a lamp out of. I'm always looking for a beautiful pedestal. I see 2 on this table. I love to change the hardware on a piece of furniture. It gives it an entirely different look. I think life can be serious enough. I love for my surroundings to be quirky and to be fun. I like people to look at things I make and smile.
