Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Lamp Shade

I've had many lamp shade ideas over the past year but got a new inspiration from my niece.

We were visiting this past week during my visit to my hometown and we were talking craft stuff and she said
"Aunt Val, what would you do with these?"
as she plopped down a shoe storage container full of sets of earrings.... it didn't take me long to figure it out.

We had just discussed a new lamp shade and then I saw these earrings which were all about the same length and all I could think of was "fringe".....beaded fringe.

so this is what we came up with...



List of supplies

(I love dollar tree scissors....they are cheap and cut 
great for quite a long time)

trim or other decorations
craft paper or wrapping paper for pattern
pencil
ruler



first start by laying your lamp shade on the craft paper....seam down and start rolling slowly and drawing your edges with a pencil to trace the shape of the shade.


cut out your pattern



next lay your pattern on your fabric and pin it down.

cut out your fabric giving an extra half inch or more on all edges.



spray your starting edge with spray adhesive and line up the fabric on your shade.  If you think you have it lined up correctly....go ahead and start spraying your fabric and start smoothing it onto the shade.
(as you can see...we had some issues with our spray adhesive...we were tipping it down and it was dripping...so you definitely need to hold it up and spray it...and if you can take it outside, that would be a good idea or you will have a sticky floor....
we ended up doing a double layer of fabric to cover the drips...)



Next we measured 3/4 of an inch between and marked with a pencil, then we used an awl to pierce holes in the shade ..... 
WATCH YOUR FINGERS!



Then came the fun part.....first Heather had to figure out the colors she wanted and come up with a pattern and then it was time to put the earrings on the shade.

We then used some ribbon to hot glue over the earring wires at the bottom and at the top....I put pleats in every 2 inches or so to make going around the curves easier.



then....tuck in all your edges and glue them down...

And you have a new shade....
I thought I'd enclose a picture of what the shade looked like before we covered it....we didn't get a pic of the pleated part that we pulled off....but then we found out how brittle the shade was .....as we kept saying "oops!" and hole after hole appeared....  :-)  so we covered it with duct tape to hold it together... hee hee
we did cover all the gaps so that they wouldn't
show through the fabric when the lamp was on....



Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Wedding Shadow Box

Wanted to share this wonderful idea by a friend of mine....

Wedding Shadow Box



What a great way to remember your
special day

(I love that she even put her earrings in there...)

Thank you Jill, for sharing your creativity!!!

:-)

Monday, May 6, 2013

Creative gardening craft

My sister and her husband came up with this creative idea for
a window box made with left over gutters.



Very Nice!!! 

thank you for letting me share your idea

Friday, May 3, 2013

Spring Butterflies


So our little friend Tabby inspired us to make butterflies today from construction paper, pipe cleaners and craft sticks....oh and a glue stick  :-)


They drew wings freehand and glued the sticks onto the wings




then they made decorations for the wings


Pretty little decorations for spring

Monday, April 22, 2013

crafty thoughts

I have to get back on the crafty "stick"....I've been slacking off....

My friend Mary has been busy though.....her husband had a fiftieth birthday party for her and she dressed like Cindy Lauper....

she made her outfit which was a skirt from goodwill that she decorated with shower scrubbers....you know the foofy girly kind that come in all kinds of colors....

well apparently when you pull them apart they are one continuous piece of netting.....she hooked those in multiple colors around the top of the skirt and then tied them onto the straps of her shirt....it looked really good.... :-)  she is so creative...


this is Mary and her sister Trina...so fun!



Saturday, April 13, 2013

March Quilt Block


Quilting Anyone?

finally got my March quilt square picked up and done....now onto April's square....

Can't wait to get the whole thing finished.... :-)

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Customized LightSwitch Plate





You can make your very own customized switch plate by
selecting a picture from a magazine....
thicker pages work the best





I tried to use white glue to decoupage the picture but
it was too wet and wrinkled the picture....
so I switched to spray adhesive. That worked much better...
you can get spray adhesive at  Walmart or Michael's

first trim your picture so that it fits on the plate and decide where you want the actual switch to be on your picture.  

Then lightly spray the switch plate and then and smooth
your picture onto the plate.....fold the edges over to the back side and then I sprayed about 4 light coats of clear coat on it....
to keep it from getting dirty...

you don't want to get it too wet or it will bleed through the picture...light coats are the way to go.  :-)



this is the glue mess....too wrinkly...
and when I tried to smooth it out....it ripped... :-(