Most of my personal belongings ( stuff that really wasn't necessary anyway) got packed away in boxes about six months ago...due to some sort of new need for minimalism, the gypsy in me not wanting to settle in or maybe it was just that I had to make room for all this baby paraphernalia. I guess I thought it would be easier to keep things clean and safe with all the little nic nacs, books and shelves gone (she had started climbing the bookcases) and for a while it seemed like a good idea. Lately I have been feeling like life has been on hold. It might seem silly to say that has anything to do with how the house looks but I do feel like having nothing around to personalize the space makes me feel like I'm not really "living" here in the grander sense if the term. So little projects have been surfacing to take whats left and make it feel more like me.
scissors
spray glue (left over from another project)
iron on interfacing tape and or clear drying glue (again left overs)
old lamp shade (I recovered two old lamp shades that had cracks and bends in them)
fabric (I used an old pillow case)
ribbon (bias tape would have been better but I didn't have the right colour)
clothes pins
Step one: Find old lamp shade! I got lucky with these white, flat shades. If you have one with pleated fabric on it you will have to take that off first and the plastic base will need to be in half decent shape. Bends and dents in the plastic are fine not big cracks are not.
Step two: You can make a pattern if you want by laying the lampshade on a big piece of newspaper and tracing along the edge as you roll the shade along the paper. If your shade is really big or you are worried about making a mistake with your fabric then this is a good idea. My shades were small and I used an old pillow case ( one to cover both shades) so I just laid the shade on the pillow case and roughly cut off the excess fabric.
Step three: Spray your shades with glue. Spray glue dries fast so you need to have your fabric laid out ahead of time and only spray one shade at a time. Go easy on the spray glue, it won't seem like a lot but if there is any excess it will come through the fabric and ruin light colours and shiny fabric.
Step four: Have your fabric laid out flat and put your lamp shade on top of the fabric. Roll the shade pulling the fabric tight and pushing out any air bubble or wrinkles. When you get all the fabric on fold over the end to get a clean edge and tac with some glue. Put a clothes pin or small clamp on the bottom and top edge. Leave the shades to dry.
Step five: If you have any excess fabric coming over the edge of the shade trim it off. Bias tape works best for covering the edges and makes a more professional finished looking shade but ribbon will work as well just make sure you can't see any of the glue and be patient while folding over the edges because there will be folds and wrinkles in the ribbon. I ironed on some double sided fusible webbing tape to one edge of the ribbon and then ironed it on which made things a lot faster and cleaner but you can use glue here no problem. When you have the ribbon fused or glued on to the outside of the lamp you can then fold over the excess gluing it to the inside of the shade to get that finished edge. Use lots of clothes pins here and leave them on until the glue dries. I would recommend doing the bottom edge first and letting it dry before you go back and finish the top. Trying to do both at once just leaves things in a big mess.
Step six: Take all your pins off and touch any thing up with glue if there are any little pieces lifting away from the shade. Now it's time to but this on our lamp and bask in the glory of your handiness.
This is also a good way to make a bunch of old mismatched lamps make sense in a room. You can do all the different shades the same or in coordinating fabrics. This project works really great if you are using wallpaper ends as well. The paper is also a little easier to work with then fabric.
I had all this stuff just laying around the house so the big bonus of this project for me was that it was free!
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