This little light of mine - DIY

DIY - ruffle lamp!

 
My brain is ridiculous. So many thoughts swirl around in there sometimes, and I'm forever coming up with new projects that I know will make my house perfect. And then people will come visit and think to themselves "wow! I've never seen such a lovely shade of white in a kitchen before" and then, in their mind, they'll call me "girl with one white wall in the kitchen" and they'll talk about it and they'll think I'm sooooo creative. Oh yeah.

Also - please pardon all of my photos. I do actually know how to take nice photos, but my camera is on the fritz, and I'm in the process of picking out a new one (and saving up for it!).

Anyway - one of my most recent projects dates back to two years ago when I got an old lamp from my Nana and decided that the old, brittle shade had to go. So I recovered it with my favourite fabric. Felt (this is mostly my favourite fabric because it`s cheap, and you don`t have to hem edges if you don`t want to), by running it through the sewing machine and hot glueing it. I finished off the inside with white ribbon, which I hot-glued into place. GLUE GUNS RULE.

Doesn't look like much, does it?

Two new felt shades.

So, then I sat on it. Not the frame. That would ruin my work. But I sat on the felt shades for like.. 2 years. Hey, I got engaged. Life got busy. And I couldn`t figure out exactly what I wanted to do with the shade.. I knew I wanted them to be fun!

We're now in the process of revitalizing our home. We don't own it, so it's all about cosmetic updates and things we can take with us. You can see the wallpaper in our room up above. I think it's great, but after two years, it's making me crazy! I want clean, clean and airy - it's going to be a soft teal and white. So, a couple weeks ago when looking to accessorize (I'm onto accessorizing and we haven't even painted yet), I found this tutorial online: http://juneberry-lane.blogspot.ch/2012/08/tutorial-tuesday-diy-ruffled-fabric.html

I loved it, but it looked like a lot of work, and I was worried that there would be errant strings hanging around that I'd be dealing with forever, and I already had felt left from last year's Wilma costume, so, I improvised. And I'm going to share it with you!

Patti's DIY Ruffle Lamp
You'll need:
scissors
hot glue gun and LOTS of refills
a yard or so of felt.
plain lampshade - covered with felt or not - either will work

How-to
1.Cut pieces of felt in a straight(ish) 1/2" piece. (The height of your lampshade will dictate how long you need your pieces of felt to be, so I'd measure the height and then triple it. This will be your length.) So the dimensions would be 0.5" x (shade height x 3). (I eyeballed this)

It's hard to take photos with one hand!

2. Get your glue gun nice and hot, and begin making a good solid line for a ruffle. I worked in about 4" sections - 'drawing' out the design for my felt at 4" at a time so that I could ensure the glue was hot and would hold well.

See the line?

 3. Take the strips of felt and stand it up so that it's held by one edge on the glue (that is a really bad explanation but I think you're probably pretty smart, so it should be okay. The photo above shows how the fabric is standing up on edge.

I was getting excited!

 4. Continue along with each strip, bringing it from the top to the bottom of the shade, working in a way which is comfortable for you. Trim so the felt is even at the top and bottom, and then start your next line of felt/glue. Continue, working your way around the lamp. This takes a long time, but if you're watching the Real World in the background, it's totally productive AND exciting.

At the end, you have to kind of plan your ruffles so that they fill up the empty space, but this is a totally great craft because you just wing it, and it all works out. I didn't draw the lines for the ruffles or anything, just made it up along as I went, and it totally worked out. You could use different colours to make it more fun, you could use a different fabric, whatever works!

I think it's neat how the light glows through the ruffles.

I'm going to try my hand at spray painting ceramic once we paint the room. I think I'll do the lamp itself a beautiful light teal. It'll be fancy!

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoy!