How to re-vamp a lamp

This is how I recovered a plain white lampshade I had from IKEA. I make NO promises on how yours will turn out or how it will work for you, but these are the steps I took and the materials I used. I hope this helps and that you have success!

Recovering a lampshade is a simple way to add one more matching element to your decor. Sometimes you have a lampshade you hate and is hideous or sometimes (and for me a lot of times) you change things up and now your lmap no longer matches. You can use leftover fabric from pillows or other projects to make these. Experiment with different ribbons or other embellishments and just have fun. Nothing is so wonderful as something you did all by your lonesome!

1. Starting at the seam of your lampshade roll it on your fabric until you reach the seam again marking on the wrong side of your fabric first the top and then the bottom. Cut out making sure you have a one inch margin on both top and bottom and a one inch margin on one side.

Fold one side of the fabric over itsself and iron. This will give you a finished edge once the fabric covers your lampshade.

Protect your work surface with newspaper or whatever else (I used a large kitchen garbage bag).

Spray the wrong side of your fabric with spray adhesive and slowly (and very carefully) roll starting at the seam of your lampshade and ending with the folded edge of your fabric on top.

Your seam should then look like this.

Your lampshade should now be covered with a finished seam along the backside. You will still have fabric hanging around on top and bottom.

I clipped mine in about one inch sections to make it easier to fold over and not have wrinkles. Make sure you only clip up to the shade and not through your shade!

Using a hot glue gun you are going to start finishing the top and bottom of your lampshade.

One by one glue the sections of your fabric to the underside of your lampshade. It seems like it would be tedious, but it actually doesn't take too much time.

Do this for both the top and bottom of your lampshade making sure you are being careful not to burn yourself with the hot glue. You may want to wait a second or two for it to cool slightly (but not too much so that it doesn't stick!) before folding it over and rubbing it smooth.

The inside of your lamp should look like this.

And the outside should look like this.

You can take some matching or contrasting ribbon and finish the top and bottom but I found mine looked just fine without it. Particularly because the slant of my lampshade wouldn't allow me to put ribbon on and make it look nice. It would work well, however on one of those cylindrical lampshades.

I did use hot glue (gluing at the top and the bottom) to glue four strips of ribbon along my lampshade for some added interest. This step is purely optional, but I quite like the way it turned out.

What do you think?! Feel free to leave a comment with any questions or suggestions!