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Goodbye old brass lamp. Hello new summer-y lamp that I love. 08.21.2010

Posted 2 years ago in Before & After, Refinishing, DIY, Home Decor, Thrifty, Tutorials

To be honest, I'm a little bit of a do-it-yourself noob in some areas. I only recently discovered the world of DIY since the Jeff and I bought our townhouse last year. So, even though you may have already seen something similar to what I've done all over the internets (oh you know, things like lamp redos and such), it's still new to me! I hope to come up with some original ideas on occasion, but this isn't one of those times. :D

I found this lamp at the thrift store for $4. Here's what you do! Once you get it home make sure it's clean so you can paint it - but first, cover the areas you don't want painted with newspaper and tape, including the cord. I painted my lamp with white primer, but you might be able to get away with skipping that step if you're in a hurry (...prolly).

With the primer dry, I used a glossy yellow spray paint to cover the entire base of the lamp. Two, maybe three, coats of the yellow paint will do. You can use whatever color you want! The base and the shade don't HAVE to match, they just have to 'go'.

After finding a shade that was the right size, I decided to cover it with fabric instead of painting it, so that it wouldn't be permanent. I used a floral crinkle fabric from Fabricland. If you use a crinkle fabric, you won't have to worry TOO much about wrinkles or puckering when you're attaching it to the shade (since it's already full of wrinkles, silly).

You can measure the circumference and height of the shade accurately with a flexible sewing measuring tape, or you can just eyeball it, like I did. Lay the fabric right-side-down on your work surface and place the shade on top of that, on its side, a couple inches away from a corner - keeping in mind how you want your pattern to look on the drum shade when it's done. Pull up one edge of the fabric onto the shade and hold it there, then begin rolling the shade along the outer edge of the fabric until the shade is covered and the fabric meets, mark this spot on the fabric adding a couple extra inches. Mark the fabric a couple inches from where the top of the shade is, and same to the bottom. Cut the fabric. 

With your fabric cut, make sure it's lying right side down on your surface and place the drum back on top in the same direction it was when you measured it. Roll  the fabric tightly around the shade again and this time, once you get to where the fabric meets, you wanna just fold over the top fabric a couple of times so you'll have a nice seam there. To hold temporarily, I taped it in place. 

At this point you can start folding over the top and bottom edges of the fabric on the shade. Choose one side to start on. Fold over the fabric once, and then again (if you have enough fabric to do so) and then fold it to the inside of the shade. Hold this fold in place with a little clip. Do this all around the shade, clipping as you go. Do the same thing for the opposite side.  Tip: To stop the shade from rolling all over the place and irritating me to death, put a jar full of stuff inside the shade to hold it down. Once you have this done, have a look at the shade, now's your chance to see if the fabric is crooked or puckered anywhere.

If it's all good, you can start hot-gluing the fabric in place inside the shade where the clips are. Just take off a clip or two and glue. You won't need to put the clips back on if you are using a hot glue gun since it dries pretty quickly. Just keep going all around one side being careful to glue the seam straight and not burn yourself, or let your helper burn you....Jeff. With the one side done, I then glued the seam along the outside of the shade (where we taped earlier). You'll see this seam pretty good at night when the room is dark and the lamp is on, so make it straight. TIP: Try to match up your fabric seam to the lamp shades actual seam (I wish I did that...) or you'll see two different vertical seams when it's on at night.

Finish up gluing the opposite side of the shade and you're basically done except for attaching it back onto your lamp base.

This project was featured (yay!) on: Craft Gossip, Tatertots and Jello, Little Miss Momma, Super Stinky Boys, C.R.A.F.T.,  Someday Crafts, Bella Before & After, One Pretty Thing, Red Ted Art, five sixteenths blog, Ugly Then Pretty, Better After, Sew Much Ado, also on CraftGawker

Link Party ♥: Creative Chic Parade, The DIY Showoff Project Parade, Making Monday Marvelous, Motivate Me Monday #32, Making the World Cuter, Mad Skills Monday #22, Craftastic Monday, It's so Very Creative, Made by You, Just Something I Whipped Up, Todays Creative Blog, All Thingz Related, The Creative Juices, Sew Much Ado

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Billie

freelance graphic + website designer
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