Monday, April 18, 2011

Lampshade Redo

 I am on a quest to refresh my house without spending a ton of money. We have had the same color scheme in our family room (red and mustard yellow) for almost 8 years and it's time for a change. I loved the bistroesque vibe when we first moved in, but now I'm all about neutrals and making the place fresh.

I know some of you are saying repaint your walls...well can't do that just yet. The FR and kitchen are all one room and I don't want to repaint until I get new kitchen cabinets and a new counter top...remember the part about it not costing a ton????

What's a girl to do in the meantime?  Well switch out lampshades and pillow covers!  I had some leftover burlap from another project (to be added to the blog later) and decided to try and cover a lampshade with it. Here is how I did it.

Love the lamp - just tired of the red shade.

I realized in order to use this shade I would have to line the burlap or you would see the red when the light was turned on. I decided to save fabric (actually it's because I'm lazy) and use another shade.

Start with a glass of wine, oh and your fabric, scissors, glue gun and a bit of patience (the wine helps with that)


I allowed for 2 inches to hem the top and bottom of the fabric and an inch to overlap around at the end.


 I hemmed and glued as I went along - doing the top and the bottom at the same time.


The only tricky part for me was around the top of the lamp - getting around the arms(?).  I cut the fabric so I could lay it flat around the arms.

Once I had glued all the way around, I went back and glued any puckers and tried to make it as smooth as possible.

Voila! A new lamp.

Here a re a few other lamp related updates. I just trimmed two plain shades with burlap trim that I picked up at the local fabric store.

And for these I switched out the gold beaded (I know seriously dated) for white ones that I trimmed with black ribbon.



 so much better don't you think?




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