Easy-as-it-sounds project from the weekend

Easy-as-it-sounds project from the weekend

• 3.04.2013

Short and sweet project recap today!

Oh, and also--I so appreciate the thoughts you left on Friday's post about my current home decor questions and style indecision... and about houseplants!! Half success, half not so much on those fronts... I haven't had any epiphanies about some of my decorating dilemmas, but I do have a much better sense of where to put which plants and how often to water them--after some advice from a sweet and helpful friend, who also gave me some little plants starts to pot and grow.

But, I also have a fun project to share, a quickie I did the other day while watching SNL reruns with the husband. The most chill kind of crafty project I can think of. ;) While the lampshade recovering project is a pretty common one around the inspiration-internet, I've actually never done it myself. But I picked out this cool charcoal cobblestone-ey print from Fat Quarter Shop and was inspired by the dark and black lampshades I've been pinning lately... it also reminded me of an animal print, like snakeskin I guess, without actually being animal print. Because I try to limit myself on that, so I don't find myself wearing leopard print flats and tortoiseshell watch like I did that one time...

Anyway, I had this boring white lampshade that I'd picked up at Goodwill a while ago--lampshades are so expensive, so even though I didn't have an immediate use for it, I bought it. So FQS sent me the nice cobblestone print, and I just recovered it! Which was almost as easy as I was expecting it would be. I definitely Googled "how to recover a lampshade" just in case.

I used the existing lampshade as a pattern and rolled it on the fabric to get the right shape, then cut it out with an inch or so on all sides just in case. I gave the fabric a light allover coat of spray adhesive, then smoothed it back on. Then turned the edge under and sealed it with hot glue. Sooo easy!

I put it on this copper lamp I also picked up on a whim at Goodwill. I'm not sure it's the best combination, but it works for now in the basement bonus room. The grey is nearly perfect with the other greys we have down there, but it's nice to add some texture with the pattern as opposed to some of the masculine lines that have ended up there with the TV, entertainment unit, bookshelves... here it is for now.

Always nice to have a win over the weekend! Verdict: lampshade-recovering: easy. But how many recovered lampshades could I ever want?? I'm set with one for now.