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Whoa, baby: DIY lampshades

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Last weekend, Jared and I skipped town and hopped over to Salt Lake City for a visit with our friends Daniel and Amber and their new baby boy. It was a great weekend trip. I brought home gobs of photos of the so-so-cute-you-can-hardly-believe-it little Levi, and poor Jared brought home a mean sunburn (courtesy of skiing sans sunscreen on a 60-degree day. Lesson learned.)

Amidst the general Salt Lake City-ing and baby-loving business, Amber and I took a day to do a little DIYing with a pair of white lampshades she had up in Levi’s room. The baby room is crazy adorable: lots of blues, browns, whites and elephants. But Amber was hoping to jazz up the plain lampshades with a fun new fabric, so we hit up Michael’s for a few supplies and then swung by Jo-Ann’s, where Amber spotted the perfect fabric for our project. After ooing and ahhing about it for a few minutes, we realized it was a Dwell Studio design. Go figure. Those folks know their stuff.

If you have the burning desire to recover a lampshade in your place (baby room or otherwise), this is really worth giving a try. The project took us about an hour a shade, but with a few minor adjustments, you could probably get the job done a bit speedier. Here’s how we did it:

The supply list is fairly minimal: plain white (or another super light color) cylindrical lampshades, hot glue gun, high-temp hot glue (so it doesn’t melt the shade or fabric), measuring tape, scissors and ribbon.

Important tip: This project would be a gazillion times simpler if you buy lampshades that are perfect cylinders (i.e. they are the same circumference on the top rim and bottom rim). The ones we used were slightly narrower on the top than the bottom, and though they turned out OK in the end, we did have to do a little tweaking and patchwork to make the final project presentable.

Start by measuring the lampshade’s height and circumference, then add 2 inches to each. Those will be the measurements for your fabric pieces. For example, our shades were 6 ½ inches tall with a circumference of 30 ½ inches, so we cut our fabric into two 8 ½-by-32 ½-inch pieces.

Using dots of hot glue, attach one end of the fabric along the seam of the lampshade. Again, this is much easier if the lampshade is a perfect cylinder; in that case you can run the fabric end straight along the seam. If your shade isn’t a perfect cylinder, you’ll have to start it at a wonkier angle. Do a few practice wraps before gluing to make sure the fabric will wrap properly.

Using dots of hot glue, slowly work your way around by gluing the fabric to the shade (to avoid lots of bumpy glue under the fabric, we kept most of the gluing to about an eighth of an inch from the shade’s top and bottom). Pull the fabric as tight as you can during this part of the process. If you have any visible wrinkles, it’s worth pulling it up and trying again. The tighter/smoother the fabric, the better (a.k.a. less homemade-y) your finished product will look.

If you are using a shade that’s slightly narrower on top, there’s a good chance you’ll be left with a less than perfect seam like us. We used a second fabric (a matching polka dot print) to make a vertical patch down the length of the shade. Just make sure you fold over the edges of the second fabric to make clean seams down the sides.

Once the fabric is all glued into place, you might be left with a rough-looking top. To fix this, we found matching green ribbon and lined the outside and inside of the top of the shade (we used hot glue again to attach it).

A few hours later, and voilà! A totally custom shade that adds the perfect splash of color to an already adorable baby room!

And if you have any leftover fabric from your DIY shenanigans, you can stick it in a frame for automatic artwork. Woo hoo to that!

So what’s DIYing in your neck of the woods these days? Any new projects underway? Or ideas still in the planning stages? Any fellow lampshade coverers with tips to share? Let’s hear it!

XO,
Katrina

Comments

  5. I bow down before you, oh crafty guru…

    Not only is the ribbon on top idea BRILLIANT, but the framed piece of fabric — Oh My GOD!

    Adorable. Thank you for sharing…

    🙂

  9. if you were feeling very industrious, you could very carefully roll your shade across the fabric, tracing as it rolled, to get an exact measurement and shape. then just cut a couple of inches around that for your excess. i’m thinking it might take a couple of tries to get it right, but for the perfectionists in the group, it might be worth trying.

    congrats on being freshly pressed!

  15. great idea! Do you know anything about it being fire safe? Is there any specific fabric you should choose or light bulb wattage you should stay away from?

    congrats on being on FB!

    • Good question. As long as you’re covering a fabric shade, and you keep your new fabric covering pulled as tight as possible and well-trimmed without any excess hanging by the bulb, it should be just fine. As far as the bulb itself, I’d stick to or below whatever wattage the original lamp and shade recommend.

  17. DIY anything is cool but this is pretty dope. i have plenty of lamps that are boring with old school lampshades. thanks for the great DIY tip =]

  18. Love this! I really like the idea of using the same fabric for the lamp shade and the frame to tie the room together. The elephant print is completely adorable. 🙂

  23. Hi there! I think I might have a solution to your non-cylindrical lampshade/fabric ratio situation. Maybe try measuring the bottom and top circles with a piece of string? Use this and the measurements for the length of your lampshade to make an accurate pattern. I’m not sure how you’d measure the angle between the length of your pattern and where the cirle meet – unless you have a math kit hanging about – but that’s prob the closet to accuracy you’ll get with my suggestion. 🙂

  27. I’ve been thinking about spunking up an old lampshade I have so thanks for reinspiring me! My lampshade is not at all cylindrical though and I’ve hesitated because of the same exact reason you had to make some tweaks. I LOVE the fabric in the frame idea too, SO simple but SO effective!

  31. What a great idea! I have been spending a lot of time on etsy lately, and it has really inspired me to start trying some DIY projects of my own. This seems like a great project to start with!

  33. This is a great idea. Thanks for making and sharing this helpful tutorial. Wonderful way to re-decorate and save some money along the way. 🙂

  43. Very nice! It doesn’t look “homemade-y” at all, and I love using the leftover material for artwork. I’m all about matchy matchy. Nice ideas!

    Congratulations on being FP! 🙂

  44. There is a spray on tack that might work well for this [3m], but the hot glue would probably be easier to use. The spray tack would keep it tacked down the whole way around though.

    • Thanks! Yep, it was easy peasy artwork in a flash and really helped tie the lampshades in with the rest of the room. Gotta love those two-minute projects!

  51. oh it’s really nice! i like DIY’s a lot and this one is something new to me 🙂

  58. This is adorable! After seeing your blog post with this fabric I have been searching high and low on the internet and haven’t had any success. Do you know if it’s still available or discontinued? Thanks so much!

    • We found the elephant fabric at a Jo-Ann Fabrics in Salt Lake City in the store around the end of March, but I couldn’t find it on the store’s website. The brand is Dwell, and I think the fabric name is Multi Elephant Parade. If you can’t find it in store, maybe another site would have it. Ebay, perhaps? Hope that helps!

  60. Great tutorial. Regarding you concern of a ‘not perfect cylinder lampshade’. Simply layout your fabric, pattern side down, place the lampshade on its side, seam down, roll the lampshade from one side of the fabric to the other whilst tracing the top and bottom (you will need to go slowly and trace a little at the top, a little at the bottom, and repeat several times), stop tracing once you have returned the seam face down again. Your trace marks should resemble a squared-off smile. Simply add the one to two inch border (the fabric that will fold over the edge and slightly into the interior of the shade), then cut out your shape. This should prevent any un-level pattern around the shade, and also prevent the unsightly seem where the edges meet. I recently recovered my daughter’s chandelier shades using the above method and it worked well. [http://decorumdiyer.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/this-goes-out-toile-my-fans/]
    Still, you have amazing results!

Trackbacks

  1. […] Last weekend, Jared and I skipped town and hopped over to Salt Lake City for a visit with our friends Daniel and Amber and their new baby boy. It was a great weekend trip. I brought home gobs of photos of the so-so-cute-you-can-hardly-believe-it little Levi, and poor Jared brought home a mean sunburn (courtesy of skiing sans sunscreen on a 60-degree day. Lesson learned.) Amidst the general Salt Lake City-ing and baby-loving business, Amber and I … Read More […]

  2. […] • A crib skirt (with the purple and white polka dot fabric) • Throw pillows (we have a gray chair we’re planning to put in the room that’s in need of some pillow-infused loveliness) • Basket liners (clutter keepers for all those adorable baby things that need a spot to call home) • Framed art (I picked up an assortment of IKEA frames last time we swung through Atlanta, and I’m planning to use at least a few of them to frame fabric, à la baby Levi’s room) […]