Now that we live in two places we are in a decorating limbo. We brought some stuff to the Ranch and some stuff stayed here but made things less fancy LA side. One awesome thing that we are doing at the ranch is customizing lamps! We bought 6 of these for $7 each at a hotel liquidation sale last fall. They have an extra outlet in the base (duh, like at a hotel) so they are extra awesome. Below are the lamps for the bedroom - a red lamp for the kitchen in progress - the two blue lamps are in the living room and the middle below is the original!
I finished this orange & blue lamp for the bedroom today!
Ingredients:
- lamp with shade
- spray paint for the lamp base
- fabric for the shade cover
- paper to make a pattern
- sewing pins to hold pattern in place
- clothes pins to hold fabric on shade
- hot glue
- ribbon for the inside of the shade to cover the edges
Step by step:
1. Spray paint the lamp! The spray paint didn't really love the rubber on the cord so I ended up having to cover the cords in black electrical tape for the first ones that we did. Juan does two coats on each and to get the plug and switches right he puts painters tape around them and uses a box cutter to clean up any tape on the actual lamp.
2. Cut out a pattern for the lampshade. This pattern suggests cutting 1 inch over the pattern - I just drew the pattern one inch over so I'd always make sure I had more - but that's totally up to you!
3. Iron a 1/2 inch hem into one side of the fabric & hot glue it down - this one will be on the outside of the shade seam.
4. Pin the fabric in place to get everything in the right spot. Pull it tight over the edges of the shade.
5. Start hot glueing the edges down on the inside of the shade. Originally, I put some modge podge on the shade first but that wasn't necessary so you can totally skip it. I do the smaller opening first (and cut a slit if you need to for the metal on the top) pull tight while glueing the bottom so that the fabric is smooth.
6. This will leave you with a rough edge in the inside. Cut ribbon and hot glue to cover the edge! For this I had a 3/4 inch ribbon that was a bit too thick to put along the whole edge without buckling so I cut it into 4 inch pieces and glued them down separately. Also, I thought 9 feet of ribbon would be enough to do two lamps and I was wrong! I had to get another roll.
Easy and awesome!