How to Embellish a Lampshade With Scrapbook Materials
There are many household uses for scrapbooking supplies besides making photo albums. Here’s one way to use your tools to add a personal touch to your decorating by sprucing up a plain lamp shade. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- White or light colored lamp shade
- 2 sheets of vellum paper
- Decorative scrapbook page borders
- Large paper punch
- Clear-drying glue
Instructions
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Use your large paper punch to punch shapes out of your vellum paper. Choose a bold single shape, such as a large daisy, heart or star. It is best if the shape is easy to identify, however using abstracts can lend a modern art feeling to the finished product. You may wish to mix up and combine shapes, such as the four suits from a deck of cards for a game room lamp, or letters of the alphabet for a young child’s lamp.
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Avoid too much design variety on one lamp. It can easily look like you threw a jumble of random shapes together. Punch as many shapes as you will need in order to distribute them evenly around the lamp shade. There should be adequate space between the shapes so that they do not appear too cluttered.
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Use clear-drying glue to affix the vellum punch-outs to the inside of the lamp shade. Distribute them evenly all around so they can be seen from any direction. Allow the glue to dry. Vellum is heat-resistant and translucent, so when you place the shade over the lamp, the vellum cut-outs will shine through the shade, creating colorful illuminated shapes wherever they are placed.
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Add a finishing touch by lining the shade with decorative borders. Take a few strips of decorative borders in shapes that compliment the color and pattern of your vellum, as well as the shapes you chose to punch. Thin borders that are scalloped or zig-zagged give a fancier look, while straight-cut borders will look clean and subtle. Using your glue, line the top and bottom edges of the outside of your shade with the borders.
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Tips & Warnings
If you have a die cut machine, use it in place of a paper punch. An alternate look will be punching the shapes out of the vellum paper, and then lining the entire inside of the shade with the vellum sheets so that you have a negative image.
