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Sunday, April 17, 2011

Updating Lamps with Drum Shades. How to Cover with Fabric.














I love easy and inexpensive updating/decorating projects that produce a big impact! I've been on a mission lately to update some of the lamps and shades throughout our home. The lamps on the console in my living room really needed to be updated:





I love the lamp bases but I really needed to toss the shades and come up with something fun and updated for new shades. I wanted to figure out a way to incorporate fabric into the shades for some color, and drum shades are the perfect shape for adding fabric for big impact.

So, for the last few weeks, I have been on a mission to find the best large drum shades. I finally found them at Walmart of all places, for $14.00!









My rug in my living room has a lot of reddish/orange in it and I was looking for ways to add more of that color throughout the room. Covering these drum shades is a great solution and I love how they turned out:








Covering the drum shade in fabric is really easy, here's how:

1) Turn the shade on its side and match up the seam of the shade to the beginning of your fabric like this (I'm using poster board to give a better visual of where to cut the fabric):




2) Draw a line an inch and a half from the top and bottom of the shade to give ample fabric to work with:





3) Roll the shade over and over and continue drawing your line top and bottom until the seam of the shade comes back around:





4) Because a drum shade is not equal size top and bottom, your fabric piece will go up at an angle and the end. So, if you are working with a pattern fabric, you will want to start your shade rolling template at an angle so the pattern will be fairly straight on the front of your shade.


5) Cut out your fabric and fire up the glue gun:






6) Begin by hot gluing the end of your fabric to the line of the seam of the shade leaving your excess fabric at top and bottom:






7) Use binder clips all the way around your shade to perfectly position your fabric onto the shade and ensuring that you have plenty of fabric on the top and bottom to fold over and glue:





8) Add a small amount of hot glue right at the base of the wire frame at either the top or the bottom and immediately fold over your fabric and press down into the nook of the wire frame and hold until secure and glue starts to cool:














9) Hot glue all the way around the shade top and bottom until you reach where you started and fold over fabric to create a nice line/seam and hot glue. (If you have too much excess fabric, trim until you have an inch to fold under your seam:










10) Trim the excess fabric where you hot glued (inside of shade) all the way down to the glue:






11) Use hem tape or any kind of ribbon or trim (I use the same color of the interior of the shade) and hot glue on top of your fabric on the inside of the shade to cover the ends of your fabric:












I just love these easy and inexpensive updating projects that really make a big impact!

That's it for now but I will be posting several projects this week that are finally ready, so check back. As always, thank you for your sweet comments, emails and notes! I really appreciate your feedback.

Have a great week friends!

Cheers!
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24 comments:

  1. Ooooo I love the new look! I just finished (two weeks ago) covering a lamp shade with fabric. Tried my patience quite a bit, but I love how it turned out! BTW - great tutorial!

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  2. I love the new shades, such a pretty color!!! I have many shades that need some love, thanks for showing me how!
    Debbie

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  3. Love, love, love! You're awesome as always :)

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  4. You have really broken this down in the easiest way possible. We've been thinking about trying to recover a lampshade but other tutorials we've found left us feeling too nervous to jump in. Thank you!

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  5. Those look great!Thank you so much for the tutorial! I need to redo a lamp shade and this really helped me out. Thanks :)

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  6. Thank you ladies! I'm glad that the tutorial is easy to follow! It really is an easy project to do with big impact. You guys rock! Thanks for the sweet comments!
    Cheers!
    Cyndy

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  7. I love the fabric you used! I did the same thing to one of my lampshades a while back, but I used spray adhesive instead of hot glue. And adding the hem tape to help finish the edge was a great idea!

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  8. Thanks so much for sharing! I have ben trying to fins a way to brighten up some plain shades.
    Yours looke awesome!

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  9. Great job, I love the fabric you used!

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  10. This is a great tutorial! Your lamps look amazing! I needs to keep this bookmarked for future projects. Nice fabric too.

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  11. loving these...we were just talking in our house that we have some lamps that we wish we know how to redo the shades!! following you now via the tip junkie!!

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  12. Wow, they look great! Thanks for the tutorial. I can't wait to try this with my shades.

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  13. Great tutorial.. I have a shade I have been wanting to do *something* with and I may try this out!

    ~Alison

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  14. The new shades look terrific... very fun fabric! Your tutorial is excellent- you make it look easy to cover the shades.

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  15. This is so great! Would love for you to link to my delightfully inspiring Thursday Party.
    http://delightfulorder.blogspot.com/2011/04/delightfully-inspiring-thursday-party-8.html
    DaNita

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  16. LOVE them!!! I have to try this! Thanks for linking up!

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  17. Gorgeous, look what you did, Walmart, shmalmart, these are gorgeous!Happy Friday,Happy Good Friday, Happy Earth Day, Happy Jelly Bean Day ( yes it's actually jelly bean day)Hugs from Katherine. P.S have you entered my giveaway?

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  18. Love it! Your fabric is beautiful. Thanks for sharing!!!

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  19. Cyndy,
    Your shades look incredible. I have often thought about doing a project like this but wasn't sure how. Have happily favorited your post so that I can refer to it again and again. Thank you so much for sharing the instructions!
    Happy Easter,
    Cheryl

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  20. Beautiful!! Love the color and the pattern.

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  21. I just love this project. I am featuring it tonight at my Swing into Spring party. The link opens at 8pm EST. Please stop by then to pick up your "I've Been Featured" button. Thanks.

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  22. I love this project- adds such personality to the lamps. I want to try it- so thank you for the great tutorial too!

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  23. LoVe lOvE LoVe! Where did you find that fabric? I've been looking for something similar.

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