diy lampshade -- upcycle it!

Sorry about last week, faithful just a little rouge readers… I must have been in a turkey coma and forgot to post a blog!

This week is a little upcycling project that comes courtesy of my very smart and crafty friend, Brie. She had such wonderful results with her project, I decided to try it out for myself!

This is a simple and low cost way to upcycle a paper lamp shade. Paper lamp shades were/are quite popular and low cost. If you are starting to get a bit tired of the look, here’s a way to breathe some new life into it…

What you need:

• Paper lamp shade

• Plain white paper (8 ½ x 11 is fine)

• Paper cutter

• Glue gun & extra glue sticks

Cut a bazillion strips of paper approx 4 inches wide with the paper cutter. Ok…maybe not really a bazillion, but you’ll need a lot.

It’s important to use a paper cutter to make sure all of your strips are the same length and width. (And who would want to do that by hand anyway??) I used plain white paper, so my strips were 8 ½ x 4.

Warm up the glue gun, and run a bead of glue along the outside of the paper shade, following the wire rim. Quickly stick the strips of paper to the shade (I say quickly, because glue from the hot glue gun dries fast!), slightly overlapping the next strip on the last as you go along.

Starting from the bottom, work your way all around the entire shade, making your way up to the top of the shade.

A good tip here is the find a place to hang the shade, so you can easily access all sides of it, turning as you go. I learned early on in this project that it’s hard to hold the shade, glue it, place the strips of paper, and turn it with only two hands!

Finally, I got smart and hung the shade from a piece of string from my overhead pot rack in the kitchen…worked like a charm!

Be patient…it’s going to take you a few hours to do this, but it’s worth it in the end.

Now my old paper shade is hanging in my bedroom and offers a very soft, interesting, mood light. If you didn’t actually touch it, my guess would be that you wouldn’t know it was paper. It looks like a more expensive, trendy light fixture now.

Shortly after my friend shared this gem of a DIY project, I saw something very similar on a home décor show….they started with a huge paper shade and glued cone-shaped coffee filters all the way around instead of paper strips. The finished product looked fabulous!


The entire project easily cost less than $10…so what have you got to lose? Give it a try…








For more about rouge, visit www.littlered.ca or check out past blogs at www.justalittlerouge/blogspot.com