Pages

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Revamped Lamp

So I decided that I need to go room by room in my house and start re-doing each one. You know, make it cute. When we moved into this house it was a total mess and there was so much that we wanted to do to fix it up. My husband has already painted a ton and I think we have only painted about half the house. I know it will be a never ending project of finishing rooms then thinking of new things to do to them. That's the best way to style a home. But I want to get to the point where I have made each room my own. So that when you enter the room, you can say, "Brooke lives here." I started small with the laundry room (which you will be seeing someday! I know, its taking forever but it IS coming) and now I am going to finish all the rest of the rooms in our house. The girls room is the only room finished to my satisfaction. The laundry room will be finished soon, then I think I'll do the girls bathroom next. I've already got ideas spinning in my head for it. Anyway, in wake of all of this re-doing, I am constantly walking through the house thinking of new things to prett-i-fy. So as much as I am trying to go one room at a time, I jump around a lot. One example of this is today's project. We have a little hutch in our front hallway that I have been itching to restyle lately. I really want to put a mirror there, but mirrors are expensive. So that will come another day, but today I decided that I had to fix this BORING lamp. Its pretty sad looking, as you can see.
I searched around for inspiration and here are some ideas I came up with.

Love letter lamp
Love letters printed onto the shade. So romantic and sweet. My love letters might be a little too steamy...
anthropologie lamp shade
These rosettes are so pretty.


Anthropologie lamp shade by avis
Love this Anthropologie inspired lamp. So pretty.
Here is what I ended up making.
Much better don't you think? Want to see how I did it? Scrolll down to see.

You will need:
Long strips of fabric (approx. 12X3 inches. There is a lot of wiggle room with this size) I used plain muslin and a lacey white fabric.
Hot glue
Cream colored felt
Scissors


1. Start by cleaning your lampshade with a lint roller. Mine was super dusty and this just helped give it a nice clean base to start with.
2. Cut some 2 inch circles of the felt out. How many depends on how many flowers you are making. They don't have to be perfect circles. These are going to be the base of the flowers.
3. Take a strip of fabric and fold in one corner of the strip and glue down about 90 degrees. Then start twisting the opposite end and turning it around the end where you glued down....twist and glue, twist and glue. Its hard to explain. If you need help, google "diy rosettes" and there are many helpful videos on You tube. Once your rose is about half way finished, glue down to the felt circle. Then finish twisting and glueing the rose. Here are some illustrations:


 
4. Continue until you have the desired number of flowers. I maybe made 20 to cover my small lampshade.
 5. Glue the rosettes onto the lampshade in the pattern you want. I covered my lampshade completely. In the picture, it shows that I used Tacky Glue (I read in a tutorial once that it was the best to use that kind of glue because apparantly hot glue will remelt and the flowers will fall off) but that wasn't working; the flowers fell right off. So I used hot glue. So far so good. I don't think my lamp gets that hot anyway. I'll let you know if anything changes.



6. When you have made the pattern you want, let dry and you have a new lampshade!

It looks like a freaking cake and I love it!

See what I mean by restyling? It just needs a little umph, thats all.

 The end. I am in love.

No comments:

Post a Comment