What's common between lamps in photography and clamps in workshop?
There's never enough of either.
However, both of these can be unforgiving on the contents of your wallet (or bank account). That's the reason I set out to make a pair of lamps for lighting my pictures using mostly the materials I already had at home.
Since most of the materials I used for making these I already had (disassembled old lamps I used before and did some digging in the garage), the material list is more for the general idea and understanding, rather than a must have. I was making 2 lamps, so if you see double the stuff you think you need for a single lamp in a picture you're most likely right.
Step 1: Materials and tools you might want to have
Some thin plywood to help cardboard maintain form;
Small piece of wood/plywood around 20mm thick (for tripod triangles);
Wood/plywood strip wide enough to make holes for sockets, thick enough to screw something to the end;
Piece of wood around 40mm thick for angled blocks;
Wooden poles for tripod legs (check the garden section);
Both thin (hand bendable) and thicker metal plates with holes (or D(rill)IY);
Lightbulbs: I used 15W non dimmable CFLs because they are bright and I got them for ~2$ a piece;
Sockets, cables, switches and anything else you need for the electrical part;
Some rope (or bike tube in my case) to hold the tripod together;
Various screws, bolts and nuts;
White paper/aluminium foil for reflectors;
Cardboard boxes for reflector carcasses;
Take into account that thin metal profiles could be used in place of most wooden parts and would probably make the end result even lighter. Just use what you have.
Your hands and head;
Angle grinder (or anything to cut and grind metal);
Workbench (or clamps, if you don't have one, like me);
Stapler (don't have a proper one, would've saved some time);
Paper glue and clear tape;
X-acto knife or scissors;
Hot glue gun;