DIY Drum Shade: When we bought our house a few years ago, the dining room had a white ceiling fan with gold accents and tan blades. It's definitely not the most hideous ceiling fan in our house, but my wife and I have always hated it for several reasons. A) gold is…

Thank you for all of your kind comments on my dark ceiling! Yesterday I gave you a sneak peek of my new drum shade, and today I'll show you how I did it. About 7-8 years ago I purchased this vintage chandelier at a thrift store. It was a little more pricey than I would normally pay, but all of the crystals were there and I knew this wasn't something I would come across often, so I snatched it up. In our old house it hung in our kitchen eating area, and when we moved to our current home I hung it in the office to add a bit of glam. I always felt like it was a little small for the space, but loved it too much to replace it. A few weeks ago, after seeing a few photos on Pinterest, inspiration struck! I didn't even try to find a pre-made drum shade that would fit my chandy. I still wanted to be able to see the fixture, but wanted to bulk it up a bit. I have a ton of pictures today, so I'll get on with it! Supplies: (2) 23" embroidery hoops-I only used the interior solid rim from each one 18 gauge wire gold tulle (2-3 yards) Not pictured: wooden skewers gold trim ribbon clothespins & hot glue gun (2 of my staple supplies for projects!) I tightly wrapped the ends of each wire on 4 somewhat even sections of the hoop...just eyeballed it. After looking at my chandelier, I determined that I wanted the height of the shade to be 10 inches, so while holding the top hoop at the right mark, I wired it together with the bottom hoop. I thought that the wire would be enough support, and it did hold really well from top to bottom, but the hoops shifted too easily from side to side. So, I clipped some wooden skewers to size and hot glued them in place near the wires. I wanted to make sure that the glue would hold the skewers in place well, so I left the wire on and sprayed the entire thing gold. Everything was holding up very nicely, so I clipped off the wires between the hoops, just leaving the skewers for support. I wired 4 more pieces to the top hoop, planning to use them to secure the shade to the light. And the frame was done! Then, I started working to cover it. I bought 5 yards of fabric not exactly sure how I was going to cover it, but here's what I came up with. The tulle comes already folded in half lengthwise, and I left it that way. Then, I folded about a 1/2" towards the inside of the top hoop, and wrapped the tulle lengthwise around the outside. That still left a lot of fabric width at the bottom, which I pulled up through the middle inside and clipped to the top rim. A little hard to explain, but basically I wrapped it so there were 4 thicknesses of the fabric around the shade, a double width on the outside wrapped with a double width on the inside. Clear as mud??? After trimming the excess yardage, I worked to pull from the top and tighten everything up. When it looked o.k., I clipped the top edge to hold everything in place. Next, on the inside top rim, I used hot glue along the edge. It soaked through all of the layers of tulle and when it cooled off all of the fabric was stuck in place and secure. After removing the clothes pins I went back and glued those sections as well. (What, you don't name your clothespins??? ;) Back in my teaching days I used wooden clothespins each year for the lunch count and helper charts, and just kept them all to use at home after the year was over. It's fun to look back at the names and remember the children. I taught 3rd grade and most of my students are probably out of college now!) After the glue dried I carefully trimmed the excess off of the top. This is the seam. The starting point is underneath and when I got to the end, I just folded it under and glued the top like the rest. I tried to place it right at the skewer so it wouldn't be as noticeable. It's not perfect, but that's o.k. I hung that part in the back. Rather than cutting a slit around the wire, I just left the fabric and pulled it a little tighter. You can't really see it anyway once the shade was hung. However, you COULD see the hot glue, so I used some gold ribbon trim to cover it. I went around the inside top and bottom edges and I think it helped to give a finished look. O.K.! The shade was done and the moment of truth had come...figuring out if I was going to be able to hang it. My plan was to just rig it with those 4 wires. It weighs next to nothing, so that wasn't an issue. Here's the top view. The wires really aren't visible from ground level unless you stand really far back and look really hard. I think it was beneficial to hang it this way, because I could adjust each wire as needed to get the shade to hang straight. (Which was probably the hardest part of the entire project!) And there you go! Here's the view from underneath. Nothing touches the shade, so we should be all nice and safe. I love it! The scale is just right for the room now and it feels updated although I can still see the pretty fixture and crystals underneath. It gives off a really pretty glow at night, too! Oh, and I almost forgot the best part. I used coupons for the hoops at Hobby Lobby, and the tulle and ribbon were on sale. So, the cost for this project was about $14! You can see my Pinterest board here where I pinned some photos that gave me the idea for this project, and you can click on the button on my sidebar if you would like to follow me on Pinterest. Linking up with: Savvy Southern Style The Shabby Nest Tatertots & Jello Classy Clutter Simply Klassic Home Home Stories A to Z

I’m blogging with a fury today. When I say that one reason I blog is because it’s therapeutical (word? not a word?) for me, I mean I blog because it’s therapeutical for me...gathers my marbles, mends my wits, gets out the jitters… We were involved in a big fender-bender last night, the kids and I. A man driving a big pick-up truck with a trailer drifted into my lane while I was stopped at a red light, side swiped the entire side of the pick-up behind me, hit the back corner of our van, and majorly hit the car in front of him who hit the car in front of her, who hit the car in front of him. It was awful and affected me all night last night…and I had the least amount of damage. So, here I am, frantically pounding away at the keyboard, still thanking God for protecting all involved, and thinking happy thoughts about… lamp shades. Let me put aside all the scary thoughts about car accidents in lieu of telling you fine readers how you can make your own. We made our own to adorn the new chandelier in the kitchen (above pic) and the one attached to Sebastian’s ceiling fan. Buying these new was way out of our budget; like $100+ out. Plus, there’s no guarantee a shade made to the specific diameter and height you’re looking for even exists. So, we do what we do and we make. And so can you. (FYI, some of the links to products I purchased/used below are affiliate links which means I’ll make a small commission if you click over and buy. But don’t worry! It doesn’t affect your price in the slightest! Thanks for supporting me!) Here’s what you’ll need: Lamp Shade Rings You can hunt down a lamp shade at a thrift store or other discount store just to take it apart for its rings and use those or you can buy bottom and top rings from The Lamp Shop like I did. For the kitchen light, I needed the biggest they had to fit around the chandelier, 24 inches in diameter. With shipping, I ended up paying around $20 just for the rings but I couldn’t find any local store that just sold rings like this. When you go to order/search for rings, keep in mind the shape you’d like your shade to be. You can have it taper at the top (bottom ring larger than the top) or you can keep the top and bottom the same, like I did. Polystyrene Plastic Sheeting. I searched for days for this sheeting. I was so clueless on how thick it had to be and I wanted something semi-transparent so that it didn’t block too much light. Finally, I settled on this polystyrene plastic. I thought it would be a little more transparent than it actually is but once I was finished making the shades with it and turned the lights on, it wasn’t bad by any means. I’m really happy with the quality of it and how easily I could cut through it. Again, it cost me a little over $20 for this roll but I’ll be able to get about 10+ shades out of it because it’s so large. As I type I have four other shades in this house whose plastic linings are torn or yellowed so they’ll all be getting new plastic out of this roll. Fabric. If you want a shade that doesn’t inhibit light, you’ll want to cover it with a thin fabric. Quilting fabrics are great for this because they’re thin and you can find solids and lots of patterns. I went with a plain white broadcloth from JoAnn Fabrics for the kitchen shade. I like it because it’s really thin and resembles linen. You can sort of see the texture in the picture below. The pattern you can see through the broadcloth is my ironing board, so you can see just how thin this fabric is. (PS, to figure out length of fabric you’ll need for a drum shade where the top and bottom rings are the same size, multiply the diameter of your lamp rings by 3.14. Make sure to buy a piece of fabric several inches longer and wider than your finished shade will be though. You’ll cut it to size once it’s attached to your plastic. A tapered shade is a little more difficult to make from scratch. The best way to make one of those would be to find an old tapered shade somewhere, carefully remove the plastic, and trace it onto a new piece. I’ll have a tutorial on reconstructing a tapered shade sometime in the future as some of mine are!) Spray Glue Scissors Thin Marker or Pencil Hot Glue Gun and Sticks An Extra Pair of Hands Ok. Once you have everything, you’ll need to cut your plastic to size (figure out the circumference using the above formula and add a half inch for overlap at the ends). Lay it out in an area large enough that you can lay the entire piece flat. (I locked myself in our room one day while Anthony was home so I didn’t have to play defense to keep the kids from walking all over it…bedroom workshop.) Then, draw the shade out. Assuming that one side of the plastic I purchased was straight, I lined up a quilting square and drew a straight line with a thin permanent marker along that side to the length I needed my shade to be. I wanted my shade to be nine inches high (up and down) and it needed to be 78 inches long to cover my rings and overlap at the ends. If you don’t have a quilting square, you can cut a piece of paper to your desired height, line it up along the straight edge of your plastic, and mark along the opposite side. If you’re using an old piece of existing plastic (the one you’re replacing the new plastic with) then obviously you’ll just have to trace. :) Next, cut out your shade plastic. (Side note: I made a lamp shade to cover our living room fan a couple of months ago and had some difficulty cutting the plastic. It wasn’t this new plastic sheeting I had but the old shade plastic that I was just shortening. Every time I cut, the plastic cracked at the tip of the scissors when it was closed completely. I’m not sure if that plastic was just old and brittle or if it was my scissors or what. So, this time around I didn’t close my scissors completely while I was cutting just to make sure that didn’t happen again. Make sense?) So now that your plastic is set, covering it with fabric is up next. The first thing you’ll probably want to do is give it a good ironing to make sure that no wrinkles pop up on your finished shade…because good luck ironing them out if that happens. ;) After it’s nice and wrinkle-free, lay it out on a flat surface. I’d recommend covering your flat surface with an old sheet or tablecloth first though just to make sure you don’t get glue everywhere. As you can see, my fabric was a tad bit longer than my table so I just made sure to get the majority on. Next up, attached your fabric to the plastic with some spray glue. I used Duro All-Purpose spray glue (I think I got this at Walmart awhile back). This stuff can get everywhere so make sure not to spray it around anything important. I went outside (at 10 ‘o clock at night) to the middle of the backyard, held up the plastic, and sprayed.) Make sure you spray the outside of the shade and not the inside. Let the glue dry for a minute or two for a better stick. Then, lay your plastic on top of your fabric. To make sure there aren’t any bubbles, it helps to start on one side and sort of roll the fabric on while running your hand down the plastic…if that makes sense. If you’re using a patterned fabric, make sure you lay the plastic on straight. If you lay it on and it’s not straight though, don’t fret. Just take it off and lay it on again. It really helps with this step and the following to have someone helping. Once you have your plastic positioned where you want it, run your hands along the top of it, pressing so that every inch sticks. Now, cut the extra fabric off. At the ends, you’ll want to leave anywhere from a quarter to a half inch to be folded over onto the plastic. A good way to figure out how much to leave on the sides is to fold the fabric over the ring while it’s sitting on the very edge of the plastic (see pictures towards the end of the post). You’ll want to leave enough to completely cover the ring plus a few millimeters. Make sure to cut a straight line. It doesn’t matter too much if it’s slightly thicker in some areas. You just don’t want any jagged edges you can get from cutting short snips. I was a little too hasty in spots thinking it wouldn’t matter and you can see those spots on the inside of my shade. Doh! So, now it’s time to get out that glue gun. Make sure you grab a bunch of extra sticks too so that you don’t have to halt progress to run for some. Hot glue is great in that it dries really quick but sometimes that’s the downfall too. And it’s messy. If there were such a glue that was thinner, room-temp, and dried quick, I’d be all over it. But, as far as I know, there isn’t, so hot glue it is. First, glue both of your ends down. Just place a very thin line of glue along the very edge of your plastic, fold the fabric over, and press it down. The thinner your line of glue, the less bulky the ends will be. Next, grab both the top and bottom rings and place them directly over the ends and right at the very edge of the plastic. They shouldn’t be sitting on top of the fabric at all. Have someone hold them there for you. (Make sure that if your top ring has a recessed washer ring and bars, that the recess is going into the shade vs. outside or on top of it. I made that mistake with a recent shade and had to tear it apart and start over.) It’s really important to take this next part slow. You’ll need to work in very small sections to ensure that you have no buckling/warping of the plastic on your shade. Run a line of glue along a couple of inches of one ring and quickly fold your fabric on top of and over the ring. Hold until it dries (a few seconds). Don’t glue the plastic (made that mistake too). It makes for a cleaner finish if you just place glue on the ring because, as you fold the fabric over, you’ll push the glue into the crevice between the ring and plastic so it won’t be very noticeable in the end. Glue a couple of inches on the top ring and then do the same couple of inches on the bottom ring. Over and over and over. Meanwhile, your helper should be rolling the rings along so that whatever part your gluing is closest to the table. This will help make sure that the plastic is always touching the ring and protecting you from having a less than straight edge once you’re finished. When you’re a few inches from the end, stop gluing. Roll your shade up so that the seam is visible. Run a thin line of glue along the end you started with and press the other end to it. Last, finish gluing the rest of the shade where you left off in the same way that you glued before, little by little and with the part you’re gluing laying closest to the table. I’ll go into more detail on the added stripes and how we attached this shade to the chandelier in another post but the washer at the top of this shade ring was a perfect fit over the threaded rod on the top of our chandelier so it just slipped right on. Until that other post, ciao! Thanks for letting me unload myself onto you through my fingers and a lengthy tutorial. Now, if someone will actually make a lamp shade and let me know how it goes, it’ll get me to 100% real quick like. :) Hasta later.

I love lamp, but now I can love my lampshades too!

This chandelier makeover is for people who want to cover up an ugly chandelier or make a new pendant light for a trendy boho look.

{{don’t judge this room, it’s a work in progress..haha}} Welcome to another week of my 52 Projects/52 Weeks Challenge….visit my 52/52 Challenge Gallery (above) to see what I’ve done and check out my Notebook on Springpad to see my ‘to do’ projects. So happy to share this DIY Drum Shade project with you! I had a...

Hello everyone! Today I thought I'd share how to make a super easy drum shade using some fairly inexpensive materials. I can't take credi...

DIY Drum Shade: When we bought our house a few years ago, the dining room had a white ceiling fan with gold accents and tan blades. It's definitely not the most hideous ceiling fan in our house, but my wife and I have always hated it for several reasons. A) gold is…

Paper is an excellent choice for a DIY lamp shade. You have a huge range of colors, patterns, and textures to choose from. Check out our tutorial to learn how to make a simple and flame-resistant drum shade using paper and adhesive styrene for your home.

So.....I made another light fixture and now my capiz shell chandelier has a friend. Meet our newest addition!! Today, I'...

When Lindsay says she has a drum shade in her house, I'm sure most of us would picture the regular drum shades, round and generally unexciting. But what

Decorative Hand-Crafted Lampshades

Thank you for all of your kind comments on my dark ceiling! Yesterday I gave you a sneak peek of my new drum shade, and today I'll show you how I did it. About 7-8 years ago I purchased this vintage chandelier at a thrift store. It was a little more pricey than I would normally pay, but all of the crystals were there and I knew this wasn't something I would come across often, so I snatched it up. In our old house it hung in our kitchen eating area, and when we moved to our current home I hung it in the office to add a bit of glam. I always felt like it was a little small for the space, but loved it too much to replace it. A few weeks ago, after seeing a few photos on Pinterest, inspiration struck! I didn't even try to find a pre-made drum shade that would fit my chandy. I still wanted to be able to see the fixture, but wanted to bulk it up a bit. I have a ton of pictures today, so I'll get on with it! Supplies: (2) 23" embroidery hoops-I only used the interior solid rim from each one 18 gauge wire gold tulle (2-3 yards) Not pictured: wooden skewers gold trim ribbon clothespins & hot glue gun (2 of my staple supplies for projects!) I tightly wrapped the ends of each wire on 4 somewhat even sections of the hoop...just eyeballed it. After looking at my chandelier, I determined that I wanted the height of the shade to be 10 inches, so while holding the top hoop at the right mark, I wired it together with the bottom hoop. I thought that the wire would be enough support, and it did hold really well from top to bottom, but the hoops shifted too easily from side to side. So, I clipped some wooden skewers to size and hot glued them in place near the wires. I wanted to make sure that the glue would hold the skewers in place well, so I left the wire on and sprayed the entire thing gold. Everything was holding up very nicely, so I clipped off the wires between the hoops, just leaving the skewers for support. I wired 4 more pieces to the top hoop, planning to use them to secure the shade to the light. And the frame was done! Then, I started working to cover it. I bought 5 yards of fabric not exactly sure how I was going to cover it, but here's what I came up with. The tulle comes already folded in half lengthwise, and I left it that way. Then, I folded about a 1/2" towards the inside of the top hoop, and wrapped the tulle lengthwise around the outside. That still left a lot of fabric width at the bottom, which I pulled up through the middle inside and clipped to the top rim. A little hard to explain, but basically I wrapped it so there were 4 thicknesses of the fabric around the shade, a double width on the outside wrapped with a double width on the inside. Clear as mud??? After trimming the excess yardage, I worked to pull from the top and tighten everything up. When it looked o.k., I clipped the top edge to hold everything in place. Next, on the inside top rim, I used hot glue along the edge. It soaked through all of the layers of tulle and when it cooled off all of the fabric was stuck in place and secure. After removing the clothes pins I went back and glued those sections as well. (What, you don't name your clothespins??? ;) Back in my teaching days I used wooden clothespins each year for the lunch count and helper charts, and just kept them all to use at home after the year was over. It's fun to look back at the names and remember the children. I taught 3rd grade and most of my students are probably out of college now!) After the glue dried I carefully trimmed the excess off of the top. This is the seam. The starting point is underneath and when I got to the end, I just folded it under and glued the top like the rest. I tried to place it right at the skewer so it wouldn't be as noticeable. It's not perfect, but that's o.k. I hung that part in the back. Rather than cutting a slit around the wire, I just left the fabric and pulled it a little tighter. You can't really see it anyway once the shade was hung. However, you COULD see the hot glue, so I used some gold ribbon trim to cover it. I went around the inside top and bottom edges and I think it helped to give a finished look. O.K.! The shade was done and the moment of truth had come...figuring out if I was going to be able to hang it. My plan was to just rig it with those 4 wires. It weighs next to nothing, so that wasn't an issue. Here's the top view. The wires really aren't visible from ground level unless you stand really far back and look really hard. I think it was beneficial to hang it this way, because I could adjust each wire as needed to get the shade to hang straight. (Which was probably the hardest part of the entire project!) And there you go! Here's the view from underneath. Nothing touches the shade, so we should be all nice and safe. I love it! The scale is just right for the room now and it feels updated although I can still see the pretty fixture and crystals underneath. It gives off a really pretty glow at night, too! Oh, and I almost forgot the best part. I used coupons for the hoops at Hobby Lobby, and the tulle and ribbon were on sale. So, the cost for this project was about $14! You can see my Pinterest board here where I pinned some photos that gave me the idea for this project, and you can click on the button on my sidebar if you would like to follow me on Pinterest. Linking up with: Savvy Southern Style The Shabby Nest Tatertots & Jello Classy Clutter Simply Klassic Home Home Stories A to Z

Paper is an excellent choice for a DIY lamp shade. You have a huge range of colors, patterns, and textures to choose from. Check out our tutorial to learn how to make a simple and flame-resistant drum shade using paper and adhesive styrene for your home.

I love lamp, but now I can love my lampshades too!

DIY Drum Shade: When we bought our house a few years ago, the dining room had a white ceiling fan with gold accents and tan blades. It's definitely not the most hideous ceiling fan in our house, but my wife and I have always hated it for several reasons. A) gold is…

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘drum’? I’d assume that most people think of their kids loudly playing a drum kit in the garage, high school football halftime shows, or their favorite rock and roll band. But, most people aren’t us, are they? We DIYers and home decor obsessed people probably...Read More »

Follow this DIY jute wrapped light tutorial - a simple project and easy update for any of your lights! This project won't break the bank, but bring style.

Drum Shade Chandelier, DIY Chandelier

The easiest drum lampshade makeover! All it takes is a little fabric and a few common household supplies to get a new, fresh, and stylish lampshade!

The view sold me on my 450 ft2 NYC rental studio apartment, but the ceiling light fixtures, those "boob" lights, were anything but inspiring. Being a renter, I…

So.....I made another light fixture and now my capiz shell chandelier has a friend. Meet our newest addition!! Today, I'...