Lamp Shade Re-Do

So, we have been having some lighting issues in our dining room lately. Our dining room window faces North and West so we do not get a whole lot of direct sunlight in that room and our one overhead light did not seem to be cutting it. It was okay, and we were living with it until I found this picture over at The Polished Pebble. I love the two side-by-side lamps and we already had a piece in our dining room that would work for this exact treatment. Immediately, I added these Pottery Barn lamp shades to my wishlist. I love burlap and had been looking for a way to use it in the house - perfect! Well, almost, just as most things are from PB they were not really in our budget and I would have to hold out on purchasing these babies. Until yesterday when I remembered that we still had these in our basement. Brought over from the old house we never did find a place to use them. I also had a natural colored muslin table runner left over from my sister's wedding. It was too long to use on our table but I had been holding onto it in hopes that I would someday learn to sew and shorten it to fit our table. Not anymore! So, here is the lampshade we started with: The first thing I did was cut off the dark and dirty red lampshade.

Next, I gathered up my supplies. My trusty glue-gun and the table runner:

And I set off gluing. This was a kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants thing and I wasn't quite sure how I was going to account for the curvature of the shade. So, the first step was to glue around the bottom edge of the shade.

When that was finished, I started gluing the top rim and realized that I could do a loose pleat to account for the difference in size between the top and bottom.

And, I had a brand new lampshade!

I wasn't a fan of the black base so I switched it out with the glass lamps we had up and our bedroom. Here is the finished product! I am really happy with the way it turned out, I still I have finished off the edges but I will save that for another day.

Categories: before and after