Lampshade Adventures

This booooring lamp sat on the chest of drawers next to the Biggest Girl's changing table. I bought it knowing I was going to embellish it somehow. Weeks later, I bought some ribbon and a week after that, Mr. Mallard dug out the glue gun for me. Tired of catching the glue gun staring at me from the breakfast bar and in need of a quick "sense of accomplishment" boost, I stole about 30 minutes and kicked some lampshade ass.

So, that's the before picture...

Here's what I did...

Cut ribbon long enough to just wrap around the lampshade. With your glue gun, place the tiniest little dot of glue on the ribbon and adhere the ribbon to the back seam of the lampshade. Making sure you've got the ribbon lined up straight, put another tiny dot of glue about four or five inches away from the first dot. Continue this until you've gone all the way around the lampshade.

If you can do this and take pictures at the same time, you've obviously also accomplished the task of growing an extra arm.

The ribbons look great, but the rough ends were bringing me down.

Problem solved! Create a tiny loop of ribbon and glue it to the back seam of the shade to cover the ribbon joint.

Add one more little dot of glue on the inside of your ribbon loop and gently press down on the exact middle of the loop.

Ta-da! Tiny little bows!

Man, I'm good...

Now we have a "new" lamp! It took about 30 minutes to finish and used only a fraction of a glue stick. The ribbon cost less than five bucks and I only doused my thumb with hot glue one time. Fortunately, the Biggest Girl was engrossed in a block stacking project of her own and has not repeated any of the dirty words I might have muttered. When you're all done, any little wisps of glue that might be marring your perfection can be rubbed right off. Do a quick double-check to make sure the ribbon is straight between the glue dots and you're good to go.

So, that's it.

Get to it!