Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Yarn Wrapped Lampshade




See the big rip?
 It's hard not to see it!
My fiancé and I had this lampshade with a big rip. On Pinterest, I found a tutorial for a yarn ombre lampshade. It looked like a perfect project to revive this poor ripped lampshade and to use up some yarn from my massive stockpile (we actually bought the green because none of the shades of green yarn I had were quite right, but the brown and white I already had). I had a bit of a struggle following the tutorial as stated. It might have to do with the fact that the tutorial used a circular lampshade and the one I have is a hexagon.

 I started off by gluing the strand of brown to one of the sides of the lampshade with my hot glue gun. Then, you wrap the yarn around and around and around...you get the idea. As I wrapped around I periodically glued the yarn to the lampshade. I found that the further along I went with this project the less glue I used per round. I have no specific formula for how I did this - when it seemed like the yarn need to be secured I put a dot of glue on the lampshade and pressed the yarn into it. Sometimes I went back and added more glue if I thought it was needed in certain spots. Make sure you keep the yarn fairly taut, but don't stretch it too tight. 

My fiancé wanted each color to be about a third of the lamp. He even got out a ruler and marked off the lampshade into thirds. A few inches below the first mark I started adding in the green. I did not cut off the brown, because I still wanted to use it so when I was using the green, I kept the brown inside of the lampshade so it was out of the way, and vice-versa when using the brown. I did the same exact thing once I started using the white yarn. 


In the picture to the right, I have just one row of white yarn completed. This is the side with the rip and it is barely visible anymore! Just the very top of it is left to cover. When I still had two colors of yarn attached, the color that I wasn't currently using went behind the other one as it wrapped around the lampshade. I don't think this was the best way to do it. When the lamp is off you can't tell that there is a string behind the outer layer, but when it is turned on the yarn is clearly highlighted. If I ever do this again, I think I'll just cut the strand if I'm moving on to a different color, and glue it back on if I start with that color again. I think it would look better. But that side can be turned so that people don't look at it. The other five sides look great.

Overall, I am very happy with the finished product, and my  fiancé  is impressed. It was an easy project, and only cost a few dollars to complete. There are a few imperfections here and there, but nothing to the point where I feel like I needed to go back and fix. 
The finished lampshade! (Pay no attention to the ragged
 cat tower in the background...one of the cats really
loves it and expresses his love by scratching it to bits. But
 it has saved the furniture so I shouldn't complain!)


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