more crafting | lampshade love

I wanted to share another crafting project that I did recently. At the beginning of winter I caught the "spring" bug early, and started painting various pieces of our furniture in bright, happy colors -- yellows and apple greens. My house went from mostly neutrals/dark woods to *shingy* bright colors and whites. I'm LOVING it! Paint is just marvelous... I love how it can instantly change the look of a room.

Along with the paint, I was inspired to switch out some of the other decor in my living room and wanted to find a special vintage lamp that would be a central piece. I walked into one of my favorite second-hand stores hoping to find "it" and walked out with this (and a huge smile on my face!) Peter was waiting for me at the truck just rolling his eyes (granted, it DID have a really, really ugly lampshade to begin with.)



I found several lampshades that I adored at Anthropologie (of course!) but they were out of my budget. So I decided to make an out-of-the-ordinary lampshade myself. I found a basic off-white fabric shade at Target... it was the perfect size, shape and material for what I had in mind.

I bought a variety of fat quarters from the fabric store for the next part. I drew petal and bird designs on cardboard and cut out my own stencils which I then used to cut pieces from the fabric.





Then I glued the birds and petals onto the shade in random patterns using fabric glue.





I was really happy with the way it turned out, but it still needed a little something more...



...enter embroidery thread and a fat ol' needle! The material on the lampshade made it possible to stitch stems and leaves around the flowers, and feet and beaks on the birds.







So there you go. A fun, easy project for personalizing a lampshade.