8.11.2009

lampshade do-over.


This was a fun project.

I have this lamp from Target I love, but I've never been happy with the red lampshade. See here. It was too dark. It only shone the bright energy saving bulb up to the ceiling instead of around the room. Not the ambience I wanted as I sat in my recliner and pretended to read a book in the evenings.

So I fixed it.

I ripped off the red polyester, which was secured with an expensive type of glue gun onto small slippery metal bars. A little tough, but nothing my girly push-up biceps couldn't handle (I can do 25 giry, and 11 manly pushups; I've been practicing. but my nose never ever ever reaches the floor with the manlies so I don't know if they count).

I traced a big wonky donut looking shape onto a soft cream muslin I was saving for I don't remember what. Sorry, no pictures of the process 'cause I was too busy speaking harshly to the skeleton of the lamp shade which kept falling apart without its cover.

Then I just started hot gluing my muslin donut back onto the base as sloppy as the red one was. Starting at the top and then wrinkling and gluing around the bottom to make the draped effect I like. And it turned out great! Except for the glue marks you could see around the top when the light was turned on. Drat.

So what do you do when you need a cover-up? You make flowers. I cut out two layers for each flower and sewed them together with a quick stitch on the machine; then glue gunned them around the top to cover the evidence.


Done and done.

Now I can see my pretend book much better.

7 comments:

ShEiLa said...

I like it.

You should'nt under rate your talent... we don't need to know that the flowers are hiding some tiny imperfection... I think it is awesome... nice change and better for vision to boot.

ToOdLeS.

mandi said...

looks good! like a big iced cake!

mmm...

Crystal Copeland said...

Awesome!

Emma said...

Very pretty and why not make it your own!!

Beeswax said...

So nice. Much better than the thing they did with ribbons on some HGTV show I saw.

You should get your own HGTV show. I'd watch.

Donna said...

Love it, love it. I love the fact that you used the word "wonky" much more. I might go buy a lamp just to try this.

Sharstin said...

you are fab--and so is that lamp shade--pretty stuff!