Shedding light on a DIY lampshade.

How to create a beautiful, fabric flower DIY lampshade…

This DIY lampshade (and it’s twin) are in our guest room.

Plain Jane lampshade? Turn it into a stunner with this $5 DIY lampshade with fabric flowers. Full tutorial from www.heatherednest.com

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There’s a lot to look at in there, so these guys often don’t get much attention, but I love them. This is not a difficult DIY project, an I’m going to show you how it’s done!

DIY lampshade supplies:

Circle cutting tool
fabric (choose something semi-sheer, thin and inexpensive)
hot glue/hot glue gun
lampshade of your choice
patience and a bit of time

Why patience? Mostly because those shades took me H.O.U.R.S. (like around 3 per shade) to make, but in terms of difficulty, it’s certainly not a hard project at all.

You just have to embrace the monotony of cutting out hundreds of fabric circles.

how to make a DIY lampshade:

STEP 1. BUY A CIRCLE CUTTING TOOL.

Do not pass go without purchasing a circle cutting tool. Or go ahead, and try this with your scissors, but don’t say I didn’t warn you 😉 I bought the OLFA rotary cutter. Will run you about $14-16. There’s even a YouTube video (actually a page of them) on how to use it. Watch one before you start your circles.

**STEP 2: BUY YOUR FABRIC AND CUT (And cut. And keep cutting):**

As far as fabric goes, that’s obviously a matter of taste, but keep in mind, this is going on a lampshade, and the purpose of a lamp, of course, is to let in light, so very light and sheer fabrics work best. The fabric I used is a very light, inexpensive polyester semi-sheer. Ran about $2-3/yard, and I purchased 2 yards for two drum shades that measure 14″ in diameter x 10″high. If the material you choose is also inexpensive, buy a little more yardage just to be on the safe side.

Now, decide on the size of your circles. My flowers are made of six circles each, the largest diameter being 6″ (the largest my circle cutter will make), and the smallest being approx. 1″ in diameter.

STEP 3: ASSEMBLE YOUR FLOWERS.

After you’ve made a sizable stack of your circles, start assembling them. For me, this step involved a lot of hot glue burns. If you come up with a better way, FANTASTIC. I’m too lazy to take precautions (which is why I have no nerve endings left in my hands).

Stack your set of circles, largest on the bottom, smallest on top. Grab the stack from the center of the bottom circle by pinching the whole set of circles together (this material is NOT what I used for the project, just using this for illustrative purposes).

Now dab some hot glue here and there, between the layers, staying toward the centermost area. Hold that pinch until the glue starts to set a bit (only about 5-8 seconds).

Release, and voila! You have a flower. Don’t get too excited here because you now have to repeat that step about a thousand times.

STEP 4: GLUE FLOWERS TO LAMPSHADE.

Again, be miserly with your hot glue because globs of hot glue can show through the shade if you’re not careful. I glued just the very center of the flowers, plus, if there were areas where the outermost layers of the flower were “flopping” in a way I didn’t like, I would put a teeny, tiny amount on the edges to hold those in place on the shade as well.

On my DIY lampshade, I ended up with 10-11 flowers per “row”, and three rows (top to bottom) total, per shade. This will vary, depending on size/shape of your shade. Play with how dense you make the flowers, as that will definitely change the look of your end result.

STEP 5: ENJOY the “light” at the end of a long, but worthwhile DIY project tunnel!

I love these DIY lampshades. And although they have some stiff competition for attention in this room from our little chandelier, and of course, Bessie the cow...

I still think a DIY lampshade like these adds some beautiful texture, depth and interest to this space. Hope you’re inspired to try your hand at this project too! And if you do, let me know how it turns out!