Remember this lamp from my boy's bedroom?
Well so far, the base has been transformed by a fresh coat of white spray paint and a SUPER easy image transfer method.
Looks awesome, right? Well then I tried to revamp the lamp shade. When I gently removed the fabric from the shade, the inner lining, which already had a few tears in it, became totally ripped and unsalvageable.
BUMMER.
After tearing all the lining off the metal braces and letting it sit in a giant messy pile on my desk for a few days, I decided I had two options:
1) Scrap the whole mess and buy a new lamp shade
2) Get creative and rebuild the lamp shade myself
Since I'm cheap thrifty I decided to DIY a new lamp shade. So out came the poster board and E-6000 glue. (Forget you see my hot glue gun; I needed the Mother of all glues for this project!)
Before I ripped off all the broken inner lining, I traced a template of one side of the shade. I used that template to cut 4 pieces of poster board, one for each side of the shade. I glued the 4 poster board pieces to the top and bottom of the metal braces using the E-6000 glue and held them in place with clothespins while it dried.
To make the shade more sturdy and give each corner a finished edge, I cut 4 strips of poster board the length of the shade, folded them in half, and glued them over each corner.
Phew! Crisis averted. Now I can move on to covering the shade with fabric.
The first time I tried to recover the lamp shade (yes, I had to recover it twice) I cut a straight strip of fabric and tried to bunch the fabric as I glued it to the inside of the shade. It worked ok, but it looked messy and was definitely not the clean look I was going for.
So for take 2, I decided to make a template of the shade to cut my fabric. I got a giant piece of paper (I taped together a few of my boy's large coloring pages, but kraft paper would be perfect!) and laid the shade on the paper. I traced the top, bottom, and one side of the shade, then carefully rolled the shade across the paper, continuing to trace the top and bottom as I went, until I had traced all sides of the shade. Does that make sense? The picture below should help explain. When I cut out the template, I added about an inch all the way around so I would have room to glue the fabric to the shade.
Since I'm cheap frugal I haven't splurged on a nice pair of fabric scissors yet, so before I started cutting my fabric I sharpened my craft scissors by cutting through sheets of foil. I love that tip!
I still have navy blue curtains from the boy's old bedroom, so I decided to use one of them to recover the lamp. It will tie in nicely with the boy's new-ish curtains (coming soon!)
For this part I did rely on my good ol' hot glue gun. I simply wrapped the fabric around the shade, gluing on the inside of the shade as I went.
When I got to the end of the fabric I ran a strip of hot glue across the edge,
and folded it over to make a finished edge.
I then glued the finished edge to the shade.
The inside of the shade looked a little rough, so I used the red bands of fabric I pulled off the original sports shade and glued them over the inner edge of fabric.
Much better!
Ready to see the completed lamp revamp?
I LOVE the way it turned out!
The P51 looks awesome and was super simple to add to the lamp. And my favorite part about this whole mini makeover...
IT DIDN'T COST ME A PENNY!
I already had everything I needed for a custom coordinated lamp for the boy's new bedroom! Don't you just love those kind of projects?
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