Renewing a Lamp Shade on the Cheap

Let’s talk about some of my shady deals…

Nadia’s bedroom is pretty big, in fact it is the bedroom that was designated as the master bedroom in the original plans. But since we wanted to fit an extra bed in it, plus a host of other things without overpowering the room, we used a small chest of drawers as a bedside table. That meant that we didn’t have enough space for two lamps, and they wouldn’t have looked right anyways. I searched high and low for some plug-in swing-arm lamps for Nadia’s bedroom.

The ones I found were either too expensive or too ornamented. Mostly both. I eventually scored two clean-line beauties on eBay, but the shades were ugly, the wrong size and the wrong color… So here’s how I renewed the lampshades on the cheap for the two swing-arm lamps.

… so I made new shades with some fabric from my stash.

For this I used the top of the original wire frame, some white card stock, a lot of Mod Podge and some beads from Nadia’s collection.

I stripped the cover from the old shade leaving just the wire frame. Since the old shades had a conical shape and I wanted drum shades the old one couldn’t just be covered. I had to build one from scratch.

I cut enough card stock to wrap around the top wire frame (the size I really wanted) and cut to the desired length.

Using clear tape, I joined the two ends of the card stock to make a tube that could fit the top wire frame inside. I gave the card stock a thin coat of Mod Podge Fabric and covered the tube with the fabric leaving an extra inch on top and at the bottom (fold the end of the fabric when finishing the tube to keep the frayed edge hidden.

I glued the wire at the top of the tube using liquid silicone (this is a temporary measure). When all this glue is dry I made small cuts on the extra fabric before turning and glueing it to the inside of the card stock and over the wire frame. This will secure the wire frame. Glue a coordinating ribbon inside to hide the edge of the fabric.

When the glue dries give it thin coat of Mod Podge inside and out. 4 hours later (or when completely dry) repeat with another coat. The frame turned out pretty sturdy even without a lower wire frame. I made little holes with a needle and using a nylon thread I hung large beads in coordinating colors.

There you have it. I could have either bought two new shades, but here there’s little in the way of choices, it would have been very expensive and it wouldn’t have fit the colors in the room so well (the same fabric was used elsewhere in the room).

Vast improvement at an unbeatable price. That’s my kind of deal!

Aunt Clara