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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

DIY Lamp Shade: Decorating the Nursery


One of the final things I needed to finish Grace's nursery was a small table lamp. A few months back, I was in Hobby Lobby, and I came across these lamp shades that were 'normal'-shaped lamp shades that were self-adhesive so you could cover it with whatever material you wanted. I kept this in the back of my mind...knowing that I wanted to make the girls' quilts and thought this would work out perfectly. (You can go here to see Grace's quilt.)

I ordered the material for this lamp shade a couple of months ago, but finally got around to doing it earlier this week. I didn't think it would take very long, but to my surprise, it took SO much less time than I even thought!

First of all....I ended up buying this little table lamp.

I chose this instead of a 'normal'-shaped lamp shade for 3 reasons....
  1. I thought it was cute.
  2. I didn't necessarily need a lamp that would exude a lot of light because I didn't foresee us ever sitting with Grace in that glider, next to that lamp to read books before bedtime, because I just figured that we would all be reading book together in the floor or on a bed or something.
  3. The material I bought is striped....and I wanted these stripes to be horizontal to contrast the vertical lines on the wall. However, with the normal-shaped lamp shade, I was afraid that I would not be able to keep the lines straight. Make sense?
I didn't realize it until I sat down to make it..... but there are directions right there on the shade!

It even tells you how much material you need. And since I already had ordered my material, I ordered way too much, but it kind of works out because I'll make a pillow case for her one day when she is able to have a pillow in her crib.

So I measured around the shade and added an inch. Then I measured the length... and added 2 inches....so that 1 inch would be hanging off of the top, and one inch would be hanging off of the bottom. The directions actually say that you can take the outer wrapping off and use it as a template...which would have been so nice if I had bought the normal-shaped lamp shade (say that five times fast), but since this one was a straight cylinder, I just measured it and then cut it myself.

One thing that I was very impressed with was how easy it was to pick the material back up and replace it if you messed up. This was something that I was worried about....that the shade would be so sticky that if you didn't get it right at first, then it would mess up the material. But this was not the case....it was easy to lift back up, then re-smooth it back down.

Then I took my scissors and cut along the rim of the shade at the top and the bottom.

I used a hot glue gun to glue the seam....

Now it's time for the trim. I bought this ribbon....


And once I put it on....I started to think that maybe I didn't like it...that maybe it needed something more. But by this time...Grace was waking up from her nap and I decided to just go ahead and put it in her room anyway.

And I think I like it the way it is. Simple.





2 comments:

Viv said...

Very cute! I like it alot!

Kristin said...

Turned out cute! Glad you ended up buying it!

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