Sunday, September 19, 2010

Floral {Lamp} Shade Makeover

I have seen a lot of lampshade makeovers and thought they were such a great idea so I decided to make my own.  I used a lamp shade that I already had and purchased a yard of designer's fabric from Jo-Ann for $7. 

Here is my lamp shade before the makeover:


I thought this was going to be an easy project because of one reason; I thought the lampshade was "Drum" shaped but it turns out that it is slightly "Bell" shaped.  I discovered this after I already cut the fabric so needless to say I did not make a template as I should have.  The result of this is that the line where the fabric meets in the back is slightly diagonal and the fabric doesn't lie flat against the lampshade in some areas.  What should have taken me about a half hour to do took one and half hours.  Ultimately the shade ended up looking pretty good and I was able to hide the bad spots because the lamp is in the corner of our living room.  I do have enough fabric leftover to perfect my shade cover but I am going to hold off until I find a good deal on new shade. 



The only supplies I used were a hot glue gun, scissors, measuring tape and iron.  First I measured the height and length of my lampshade and cut my fabric so that the length was two inches longer and the height was one inch longer.  Next, I folded the raw edges of the fabric by half an inch and ironed them down then I hot glued the seams together.  

When I was done with this step my fabric looked like this:


Lastly, I matched the fabric up to the top and bottom of the shade and hot glued it around the edges.  Like I said, this would have been super-EASY if the shade was perfectly drum shaped but since it had a slight taper and was a bit bell shaped I should have created a pattern first.



To see what this lamp base looked like before my makeover click here.

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3 comments:

Lauren @ 31diy said...

Looks good! I like the fabric you chose and the base is really fantastic too.

Carry Grace said...

You made it look great in pics. Isn't it funny how we get surprised with something and it always takes WAY longer than we think. It keeps the DIY life interesting.

Great fabric choice, too.

Tisha said...

love it! you inspire me to think that even as a working mommy i CAN make the time for home decor renovations!