I had this older light fixture in a stair case at home and have been wanting to replace it for a while now.
Besides it having some wiring issues I wasn't a big fan of the shiny brass so I figured this would be a fun
project to create something new using a prebuilt light fixture.

Here's a brief run down of how it turned out...

Ikea has a light fixture called Gyllen. The front panels are sold separately, come in many different designs
and are made of a glass about 6mm thick. This swappable front panel made it a good starting point
for my project.

There are two sizes, one with four bulbs (shown above) and a smaller
one with two bulbs. You should be able to make a faceplate for the smaller version without having
to break the panels into multiple pieces as I had to do.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60176204

I started by measuring the ikea light fixture I purchased and mocked it up 1:1 in Illustrator. I modified it slightly by
tossing out the long set of brackets and instead used a pair of the shorter brackets at the bottom and one set for the sides.
This allowed for a smaller panel without it looking uncentered vertically. I did end up having to drill new hole to
mount the side ones.

I settled on a Japanese fan pattern for the face. Part of my decision was wanting a pattern that didn't have
internal shapes that would simply fall out; this pattern fit the bill perfectly.

3mm Bamboo Amber P3 Sheet. I set it up so there wasn't any small parts of bamboo I had to glue back on.
This took a more time but saved me alot of headache on the assembly.

3mm White Acrylic P3 Sheet. I made sure the seam was always behind bamboo so it would stay hidden.

Bamboo was cleaned and mineral oil applied to the face.

I used a gel type super glue and glued the acrylic and bamboo
pieces together seperately then...

-placed glue on the outside border of the bamboo, carefully positioned it on the backer acrylic.
-covered the face with wax paper (so no glue would get onto the books)
-placed the heaviest books I could find on top.
-let sit overnight on a flat/hard surface.

The light fixture hardwired and mounted on the wall.

Installing the light fixture itself went fairly smoothly. As the actual fixture is the plug in type
I had to hardwire into the existing wiring.

The faceplate slides down from the top and rests in the bottom brackets. When you have to change a
bulb you just slide the panel up and off.

Turned on you can't see any seams; no light makes it through the joints in either the bamboo or the acrylic.

Another angle of the finished light.

Information on the light fixture box.