Lampshades & Painting: 101

Several of you asked about learning how to cover a lampshade, so here's a quick little tutorial on how I did mine. It's really pretty easy, not rocket science by any means. Above you'll see the toile shade & the seam where it came together in the back. This seam can be folded under and using fabric glue, pressed into place. The seam will then be at the back of the lamp. On this shade I cut the fabric to go just around the top & bottom of the lampshade & then covered the raw edges with trim on top & bottom.
Here's a square shade I covered in our master bedroom. Same method, seam to the corner & folded under & glued down with fabric glue. I'll go through all the steps below. If you are adding trim, you don't have to be as careful, as the trim will hide a lot of little mistakes. You can see with a check like this, your seams will not match up in the back, but it will look fine from the front. On this shade, I cut the fabric a little bigger than the shade & wrapped it inside & glued down. Again, covered with trim at the bottom & none at the top. You can really do whatever you'd like, trim or no trim.

Silk one finished. You can see just a little bit of wrinkling. If you put enough spray adhesive, it should smooth most of the wrinkles out. Not a big deal. See, the checks look good here from the frontside, which is the side you are most concerned about.
Underneath the lampshade, you can see where I turned the edges under & glued them down.
OK, let's get started! First, you'll need some sort of paper to make a pattern with. Tissue paper is fine, craft paper, anything big enough to hold your lampshade completely. Make sure your paper is big enough (tape pieces together if necessary) that when you place the lampshade on it & roll it completely around the diameter (staying flat on the surface as you're rolling), that you'll have enough paper to complete the circle. Make sense?? Then, you'll place the shade down & either cut it exactly to fit your shade or make it a bit bigger to overlap...either way works, again depending on if trim is being used. Trace your pattern (top & bottom of shade) as you are rolling the lampshade all the way around, making sure to meet where you started from & make the pattern big enough that you can trim any excess. You don't want to skimp & end up cutting your fabric too short.
Your shade will roll all the way across the paper as you are tracing the pattern. Once you complete rolling the lampshade,it will look like a circle.
And your pattern should end up looking something like this, only twice this size. I didn't use a large piece & the pattern should end up looking like a circle with a hole in the middle. Next, you'll put the pattern on your fabric & cut the shape out. If you have a patterned fabric, it won't match up at all, but something without a pattern will be fine. I just don't worry about the matching part (like the toile or check) & put that to the back of the shade where it won't be seen.

Now, you're ready to use the spray adhesive (pictured below). This works great for keeping fabric in place & you can still move things around with no problem. Just spray the shade really well with the spray adhesive (might want to go outside for this). Place the fabric in place and start smoothing it out. If it wrinkles, work the wrinkles out and keep moving all around the shade until it's in place. It takes a little bit of work, but you can pull it off & keep working it if you need to. After you get it all smoothed out, then go back with scissors & start trimming the edges. Again, make it even with the lampshade top & bottom OR overlap and glue down from the inside. Trim it out with some trim & fabric glue (pictured below) and you've got a whole new look for an old lampshade. These shades I used were flat fabric or those paper shades you see around. Those work really well for adding fabric if they are flat to begin with.

Here's my bunny lamp again. See how I added fabric from my window treatment & added some special trim to it. A designer look for a fraction of the cost!
Kitchen Window Treatment

Fabri-Tac fabric glue (great stuff, JoAnn's has it!), Spray adhesive, & Sophisticated Finishes Blackened Bronze which I'm about to tell you about. This is great stuff too!
Someone asked about painting shiny brass. YES! It can be painted very easily. Here's one of the light fixtures that was in our house when we moved in...they were all shiny brass. I'm in the process of changing them out to bronze. Some of them I've found already bronze at yardsales & have picked those up for cheap & others, I've painted with craft paint or the above product, Sophisticated Finishes. Either way works well. This particular fixture was shiny brass & I used satin black spray paint, then added bronze over the top with bronze craft paint, mixed with another rusty color called Burnt Sienna. You just spray the whole thing black, let dry, then daub on the craft paint with a damp sponge until you get the bronze look you want. Very easy project! I have changed so many things over the years from shiny brass to black or bronze. Edited to add: If the brass is something that you will be touching, then use a spray primer on it before you spray it black & do the bronze finish on it. Things hold up really well if you don't touch them, but items that are handled are subject to chip (like door knobs). So the primer will help it stick better.

Like this bunny! Remember, I found this at a yardsale & it's shiny brass.

No more! I used the Sophisticated Finishes Blackened Bronze on this one. I wouldn't totally recommend using this on shiny brass for a big thing, like a light fixture. The spray paint method above works best for larger items. SF works great on smaller things. You can find Sophisticated Finishes at Michaels & I'm not sure where else. I had to buy a craft kit (with 2 other colors) to find the color I wanted, but they do carry larger bottles of other colors. I love this Blackened Bronze!

This is the old ceiling fan from my old house in GA. It too was shiny brass & white. I used the spray paint method above for this too. Took the whole fan down, painted it all & hung it back up. You know the old fan I'm talking about...shiny brass & white, which is all over the place still! It really made a huge difference in this old thing. Changed out the glass globes to the pretty alabaster-type ones too & that always looks better.

Here's another lamp before & after. This one's in my foyer & as you can see above it was a bright gold. I used Sophisticated Finishes in Blackened Bronze on this too. It wasn't brass, but some sort of resin material, so the SF sticks to it very well. Looks much better, don't you think?

So, that's my quick little tutorial on lampshades & painting things! It's a great way to update some old things you have laying around the house. Start looking around & you will probably have something you can paint. I do it all the time! Picture frames, lamps, anything brass or gold can be painted to whatever you want it to be. It's such a frugal money saver & a great way to get a new look!

Paint it or cover it!

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Andrea at SouthernHeart tagged me for some Southern Thangs, so I'm gonna add my list here. Some of these may have been covered. I got a little help with these, but they are oh, so true!

In the South:

1. A true Southerner makes friends standing in line. We don't do "queues", we do "lines". And when we're in line, we talk to everybody.
   
2. A true Southerner never goes snipe hunting twice. (I really did have this done to me growing up, anyone else?!)
   
3. A true Atlanta Southerner knows that all directions start with "Go down Peachtree" & includes the phrase "when you see the Waffle House" & when you're in Cobb County, all directions begin with "go to the Big Chicken". (this one is totally true...see pic below!)
   
4. The North has double last names, the South has double first names.
   
5. You may hear a Southerner say "ought" to a dog or a child. This is short for "y'all ought not do that" and is the equivalent of saying "No!"
   
6. If there is the prediction of even the slightest chance of snow, we must go to the grocery store. It doesn't matter if we need anything or not, we just have to go and pick up bread & milk.
   
7. It is not a shopping cart, it is a buggy.
   
8. "Jeet" is actually a phrase meaning, "Did you eat?" (a personal favorite of my hubby, LOL!)

I should have just included this pic of the Big Chicken in my post originally (See #3)! You really have to get a visual of it to really appreciate the magnitude of this thing. I grew up a few miles from the Big Chicken, so it's always been a part of my life. This landmark started back in the 60's as a chicken restaurant, which eventually went out of business & was sold to KFC in 1974. They kept it as is & it was finally renovated in 1996, with the help of Pepsi. Back in the early 90's, there was talk of tearing down the Big Chicken & those of us who grew up with it launched a campaign to save it & we won! There was actually voting, help from polticians, the whole nine yards, but we who have a soft spot for the Big Chicken prevailed & here she stands to this day!

Hope you had a good laugh! We are pretty predictable down here in the South!

Let Your Light Shine!

"Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."

Psalms 119:105

Have you ever counted how many lamps you have around your home? I really had not either, but started taking count of how many I do have...and it's a lot....28!! I suspect you have a lot of lamps at your house too. Can you imagine what our homes and rooms would look like without lamplight glowing? They really do add such a nice ambience and if you're like me, I tend to use lamplight much more than overhead lights for most of my rooms. Just thought I'd show you the many and varied lamps that are strewn about my home (and this just a portion of them). They are all different, on purpose, since I grew tired of the more formal look of silk shades and bases and now I have quite a collection of interesting, but totally different lamps. I tend to keep my lamps for many years & redo them as needed. I don't need more lamps right now at all, but when one calls my name at a yardsale, sometimes I can't resist. Come with me for a tour of my lamps....

The one pictured above is a yardsale lamp that I bought for $5 & now it sits on a black desk in the den. Oops, I see I need to move that shade around so it sits properly.

Floor lamp that I've had for many years. It used to be a taupe color & I repainted it with a bronze finish last year. Added a new brick red drum shade (from Walmart no less) & now it has a whole new look.
Another lamp I've had for probably 12 years (& paid too much for then, around $100), it was originally a brighter gold finish & is metal. Again, a new bronze finish & lamp shade from JoAnn's & it's a whole new look. I'm really attracted to these drum shades the last couple of years. Another trick is to change out finials for a new look. They can be painted to match your lamp finish & really give a lot of interest to lamps.
This tiny little cutie also came from a yardsale for $2.00 & I had to buy the shade. It dresses up a wall shelf in the den.
This one was the wrong color green when I bought it. Found some Green Apple paint at Lowes & gave it a new look too. Added the trim around the bottom of the shade with fabric glue. This one is on my desk in my office nook. This one came from a yardsale too, for maybe $4. I had the shade already to add to it. It's in my upstairs guestbath. You can see my love of leopard print is a sure thing. Keep scrolling if you don't believe that!
Another little lamp that's in one guestroom that was found yardsaling too. I also found the leopard fabric at another yardsale & used it around my house (got probably a yard of it for $1.00 & used it on lampshades & pillows). Embellished with trim & beaded fringe.
This floorlamp is really vintage, found at a yardsale for $10.00 several years ago. I treaure this one, the base is really pretty too. Covered a plain square shade with my checked fabric in this guestroom & added fringe.
Another yardsale lamp for $5. It was gold, repainted bronze. Covered the shade with my black/tan toile fabric in the guestroom.
Yet another yardsale vintage lamp, I think this one was $1.00. It had a chip on one edge & I repaired it with Plaster of Paris. Repainted it & added the leopard fabric & beads. Also in a guestroom. One of my favorite lamps of all, another yardsale find at $7. It also had one leg missing, but the leg got repaired & painted black to match. It had no shade, so I bought a square one, covered it in one of my kitchen fabrics, added the fringe. Just love this little cutie! I was told one of these was once in a Southern Living house & was very expensive.
One of 2 Bronze buffet lamps in the Diningroom. These were bought new. I love tassels used around the house & love how they add some pizazz to lamps. You'll see tassels on lots of my lamps.
Picked this little funky lamp up at a design shop in Marietta for around $13, if I remember right. I love the shape & beading on the top & bottom. This one's on my vanity in the master bedroom.
Getting away from the more traditional lamps I had always had in the bedroom, I found these ceramic lamps with square shades at Olde Time Pottery & thought they'd be a nice change & added some of the blue that I have in there.
Also, found the little mate to the larger ones in the bedroom. This little one is on a shelf in the master bathroom. Another yardsale find from last year, this one was $3. I already had the shade in the closet & it's a nice fit. This is the type of shade I was always using for years, until I branched out to more unique & less formal ones. I love the classic shape of this lamp & it's pretty old. Love the fleur de lis, which are also favorites of mine.
Buffet lamp on my foyer table was found at Tuesday AM. It had a simple cream shade & I changed it out to this black fabric one that I found at a closeout type store in GA for $2. I painted it with a bronze finish, original was brighter gold.
Can you believe another yardsale lamp for $5? This is a classic column lamp & I just love the shape of it. Added the linen shade from JoAnn's. I liked this lampshade so much I used it on 2 lamps...one upstairs & one downstairs.
This is one of the most expensive lamps I have. Think I paid about $100 for this one from a decorator in GA. I used to shop at her home store & bought this one more than 10 years ago when I was first trying to outfit my house with lamps. It has a hand-painted motif of fruit. I probably would never pay that much for a lamp again, but I know that's not a lot for a lamp these days. It was for me though! It originally had a cream silk shade & I deformalized it with this linen one from JoAnn's & sits in my LR. This one came from a really neat store in Atlanta called Hill Street Warehouse. They have a closeout room with lots of great deals on things & they had a huge clearance on lamps one day when I was in there about 3 years ago. I paid $50 for this one. It's a nice ceramic with a pretty fruit design on the front. Reminds me of Raymond Waites, whose designs I love. This one is in the livingroom also. I had to add the bronze fixture above to show you. Found this while yardsaling last weekend for $3.00. It is an outside light & will look smashing on our front porch to replace the ugly builder's one that is there now. I can't wait to get it up!

Hope you enjoyed the tour! Now go and count how many lamps you have (I'd love to know!). I bet you may be surprised just how they add up.

Let's let our lights shine...in more ways than one!