Striped Lampshade Tutorial

Thanks for your kind words on all the little changes I’ve recently made in the dining room.  I’m back today with the striped lampshade tutorial I promised!  This is the easiest project in the world and costs practical nothing in terms of money and time.  Actually writing this tutorial was much harder than doing this project.  In my opinion that’s the mark of an awesomely easy diy project!  Here we go!

The Supply List:
– lampshade (preferably a round drum shade because it’s the easiest to work with)
– grosgrain ribbon
– hot glue gun
– ruler/tape measure
– pencil
– scissors

The Process of Striping a Lampshade:
1. I think it’s best to work with the lampshade while it’s on your lamp.

You will start on the bottom with a small bead of hot glue to attach the ribbon.  The starting edge of ribbon doesn’t need to be perfect since it will be covered.

2.  Let the bottom edge be your guide as you work your way around only adding a small strip of hot glue to the bottom edge of the lampshade about every 2 to 3 inches around.

You don’t need to hot glue the entire bottom edge.  With just a few spots of hot glue the ribbon will stay in place.

3.  This step only applies if you use a tapered drum shade like I did.  What happens in this case is that the ribbon on the bottom will gap a little.  So, to get rid of the gap all you need to do is use your thumb to iron out the gap by pressing down from one side all the way around to the other.

Then hot glue the gap down.

The bottom back won’t be pretty but in this case no one will ever see the back.  If you want your shade to be perfect from all sides use a regular round drum shade (as I recommended in the supplies list) instead of a tapered drum shade and you won’t have to worry about any gapping at all.  Even with a tapered shade though the only place where you have to deal with this gap issue is on the very bottom.

4.  Once the bottom stripe has been added, move to the very top.  Then repeat step 2.

5.  Once the top and bottom stripes have been done get out your measuring tape/ruler to decide how many more stripes you want to add as well as the distance you want between each stripe.  This will obviously vary depending on shade size and ribbon width.  In this case my ribbon is about an inch wide and I chose to do have 2 inches in between the black stripes.

6.  Use your pencil to very lightly mark where your ribbon will go.

7.  Add a small bead of hot glue to attach the ribbon and then instead of hot glueing every few inches just pull the ribbon tightly around to wrap the shade.  Then add another small bead of glue to attach the end.

Basically for any/ all of the ribbon stripes you add to the middle section of your lampshade you will only want to hot glue at the beginning and end of your ribbon.  You do not want to hot glue every 2 to 3 inches all the way around as you did with the top and bottom stripe.  Why?  When you are done “striping” your lampshade you will want to be able to scooch (for lack of a better word) the ribbon to make sure it is the same distance all the way around.  Only glueing the ends basically gives you some wiggle room and allows you to make any small adjustments to level out your stripes.

That’s all folks!  The back looks like this when you’re finished.

One last thing I want to add is that I don’t recommend pre-cutting your ribbon.  I think it’s best to just work with the ribbon on the roll stripe by stripe  Plus this takes out a lot of extra measuring and reduces any too short ribbon mistakes.  Wonder how I know this?  😉  Trust me, mmmmkay.

Now go forth and stripe some lampshades!

P.S.  Today’s my birthday!  Another year wiser – woot!

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