Craft Time

The combination of my obsession with Pinterest and the upcoming arrival of Marlee has brought out the crafty size of me, which to be honest, I did not know even existed before a couple years ago. I am the least artsy person I know but Pinterest makes everything look easy. My latest project has literally taken me 4 months. I originally bought 2 yards of fabric and only completed two rows of flowers. So then I procrastinated for a couple months, finally bought more fabric, and was short AGAIN. I procrastinated some more and realized Marlee was going to arrive before her lamp was complete. I went to Joann's for one last fabric purchase and can finally say it is finished! And I am quite happy with the way it turned out.

Fabric Flower Lamp Shade

The original Pin of this from the wonderful blog of Simply Ciani. Her lamp shade is definitely Shabby Chic, as she states, while mine is more on the shabby side BUT I was very proud of my lamp and received a ton of complements on it back when it looked like this:

This lamp shade was really easy to do, once you got the hang of wrapping the fabric. If you are a perfectionist, this is not the craft for you. My 'flowers' are all different in shape and size and style - not on purpose - but because they just turned out that way. If you are in a hurry, this is not the craft for you either. Even without all the delays in the fabric, this took many hours of my time. It does look great in Marlee's room though and I always feel proud when I finish a project.

I started with a plain lamp shade and base which I bought at Lowe's for 15$ - on sale of course.

The fabric I went with was a costume chiffon shear because I liked the color and it was easy to wrap around my finger. I was also able to pull it apart easy and it made kind of a rough edge which I liked. I purchased a total of 8 yards of fabric (4 light pink and 4 platinum grey).

I cut the fabric into 1 inch - 1 1/2 inch pieces and then tore them into strips.

Pile of strips of fabric

I wrapped each strip of fabric around my finger till a 'flower' was formed.

Tada!

 I used my handy dandy hot glue gun to glue the end of the fabric together and then placed a nice size glob of glue on the lamp shade.

Then pressed the flower in place and held for a second until the glue was dry.

One flower at a time and it was finally coming together!

You can tell that my flowers continued to get bigger by the bottom of my lamp shade. I was tired of wrapping and gluing so bigger flowers = more coverage!

Wrap. Wrap. Wrap. Glue. Glue. Glue.

(All those little strings are from the fabric. I just cut them all off at the end.)

And finally, I was finished!

 Proudly on display on her dresser.

I have a feeling this will probably be the last craft I will be completing before Marlee Jo arrives so at least I finished with a bang. Two more weeks till maternity leave!