Thursday, August 11, 2011

My attempt to recover a lampshade

We have a serious lack of good, solid lamps over here at the Moore house.  We have one that my mom gave me--a hand-me-down from her house--and one that I bought with wedding credit at Pier 1 right after we got married.  Everything else is flimsy, cheap-o, Ikea lamps, and they all drive me crazy.  But what's a girl to do?  Use overhead lights?  No thank you.

So...thanks to pinterest and the design blogging world, I now see the beauty of buying a 5.00 lamp at Goodwill and revamping it.  Or, a 5.00 clearance lamp at Target--either way.

So, with that in mind, and momentum from my shelf makeover, I decided to try my hand at a Goodwill lamp, using this tutorial.



that's her finished project.

She makes it sound so easy, so I bought my supplies (which luckily can be returned, other than the fabric) at Hobby Lobby, got John down for a nap, got Ada occupied   watching cartoons, and I "went for it."


It's not easy!!!!!


I can't even get my pattern drawn on paper.  Oh my word.  I am about to go crazy trying to do this.  Can anyone help me?  Have you done this before.  Anyone, anyone?  My visions of lamp cuteness are quickly vanishing.

I had such hope.

Update:  I have made progress.

I was bound and determined to do this thing, so I googled some more.  This time--how to make the template for the pattern.

And then, out of no where, it dawned on me--newspaper.  I just wrapped the shade in newspaper, taping it on as I went, (It actually took a combo of three sheets of newspaper), then I cut around the shade.

I carefully removed the newspaper pattern, and I cut my fabric.

Now I am trying to figure out how to tackle actually gluing the fabric to the shade.  I'll post when I have actually succeeded 100% with this project.

5 comments:

Laura Forman said...

Oh no!!! I am so sad!! I have all of these visions of things I want to do when we finally get a house...and I am sure they are not easy when I actually sit down to do it. I wish I had advice...I see such great potential...you could always contact the person who actually did the tutorial???

shannon said...

Oh heavens! I have two lamps I'm working on right now and I want to recover the lamp shades. In my head it seems really easy. But now I'm scared to even attempt it! I have painted a lamp shade before and liked how it turned out. Here's a link:
http://www.remodelaholic.com/2011/04/hand-painted-lamp-shade-tutorial.html
Good luck!!

Kathy said...

oh my goodness, that lamp is going to be beautiful!!! I am going to attempt the same thing! Did you get that fabric from hobby lobby, too?! I LOVE IT!

LB said...

Kathy--yes!!! Hobby Lobby!!! I knew that I needed this project to be very inexpensive, so I started there, and they actually had lots of cute fabric options!! You should check it out. I will let you know how it goes with actually gluing the fabric to the shade. I am waiting for the kids to be in bed.

Unknown said...

LB- I have to be overly dramatic here: locking the toy closet totally changed my life. When I say that I would scream and scream and spank and spank when it was time to clean up, I am NOT exaggerating. It was AWFUL. And then, duh! Something as simple as that, it really did change my life. It's hard to remember that my children are just little BABIES. The oldest is only FIVE, how much self control did I really think she was going to be able to have? And the boys are just too overwhelmed with all our stuff. So yeah. It's so simple, but I think it is just the best idea EVER.