I have had the same lamp in the girls’ room forever. It actually started out in my sister’s room, but when she outgrew her Pottery Barn Teen dream room, my Mom passed the lamp on to me. It once had this really cool shade with a cool pointed bottom and hanging jewels. Enter my, at the time, curious 4 year old. Those jewels were eventually ripped off one by one. The lamp shade was marked with an “A”… and pretty pink highlighter. It desperately needed some love!

When we moved to our new home, I quickly cut off the pointed edge. And glued on some flowers. Quick fix. But, I knew it wouldn’t be a permanent solution.

Then, I found this picture for inpsiraton.

 

Perfect.

I gathered my supplies and set to work.

Supplies:

Lampshade

Gluegun

Basically, I gathered every random thing in my craft room.

(You will want a smooth lampshade to recover. Removing my hotglued flowers from my shade proved to be challenging. I ended up using my hairdryer and knife to resoften the glue, and peel it off. Worked like a charm.)

Step 1: Cut fabric to size. I cut mine about an inch wider than the shade, and about 2 inches longer.

Step 2: Hot glue down the raw edge of the end of you fabric. Glue the folded edge onto your shade.

Step 3: Carefully wrap your fabric around your shade. You want to make sure that it is fairly tight around the shade, and that you smooth out any wrinkles as you go. If you are using a directional fabric, make sure to keep everything lined up.

Step 4: Fold under the raw edge of the other end, and glue on top of the other folded edge.

Step 5: Glue the bottom raw edge to the inside of the lampshade. (Notice I had a cute little helper.)

Step 6: I think most, if not all lamp shades have wire attached to the top, so cut small slits at the wires to fold the top raw edges onto the inside. Then glue to the inside. Tip: I pulled this tight like I would when reupholstering a chair, gluing the middle section between each wire first. Using my hand to push the fabric up tight over and into the inside of the shade. (That is not easy to explain!?) Then, continued gluing the rest of the way around. This assures a nice tight fit of the fabric to the shade.

Step 7: Glue ribbon around the raw edges of fabric on the inside of your shade.

Step 8: Embellish. I used a vintage crocheted trim I found at a local thrift store. And finished the lamp off with felt flowers, paper flowers, cabochons, and ribbons. The possibilities are endless.

And that’s it. A pretty new lampshade!

Linking up with:

Craft-O-Maniac.com