October 17, 2013

$2 Lamp Shade Redo

As soon as I attached the new lamp shade to the fan in Levi's room, I have been plotting its makeover.  I know white lamp shades work well for some people, but I'm just not one of them.  My lamp shades need something more exciting, but I couldn't quite settle on what to do to little Levi's.  I considered ping pong balls (yes, yes I did....and I still really want to do them somewhere, but for this particular shade I would have needed about $45 worth of ping pong balls and that just seemed ridiculous!), yarn, and the usual suspects: paint and/or fabric.  I knew I wanted something black, white, and pretty simple, so eventually I landed on ribbon.  Because I was going for simple, I was able to just use the cheapy 50 cent spools.  After four spools, I had this:

At this point I would normally share my process with you, but there really was no process.  I pretty much just wrapped the ribbon where it seemed to look good and hot glued it at the beginning and end of each spool.  Here's an in progress shot:
The only problem with it was that once I was done, I realized the ribbon would be way too visible on the inside...see what I mean?
Solving it was actually really easy.  I went through and put a dot of glue on each piece of ribbon...top and bottom.  And once they were nice and secure, I cut the insides out.  Now obviously that wasted some ribbon, but at only 50 cents a spool I really wasn't sweating it too much.  Plus, I went ahead and stored them with the rest of my ribbon just in case they can come in handy somewhere else later! If I had to do the whole thing over again, I think I would do it the same way again because I think it would be way, way more time-consuming to try to cut each piece before gluing it!  As it was, I spent about 30 minutes on the shade total!


Admittedly, the shade may not be finished yet.  I may end up adding more black once the whole room comes together, but I figured it was better to try to add some later than try to take it away!  Hoping it will be done, I went ahead and cut out a fabric circle and glued it down as a diffuser to the bottom.   
Good news is so far Levi seems to really be liking his lamp. Or at least every time we go into his room, he points to it and says "new," so I'll take that as he likes it!


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