Lampshade makeover

Last week my daughter told me that she no longer wanted her Disney Princess lampshade and took it off the light. She was angling for a Barbie one but I was hoping to persuade her to have one a little less plastic pink. I was sure I had a lampshade that I could do something with without having to buy one. I went to the loft and found this:

Which I really like but we have no need of it since we moved. It is an IKEA lampshade and I have always liked the whimsical white stitching flower design. But it is grey. This is great to me but not so to my seven year old daughter who wanted a Barbie lampshade. Her room is white but she has pink and blue curtains and a pink flowery design duvet. Both of these have a stitch element to them and the curtains have ribbon on them.

(Not the most beautiful of pictures, it could have been worse, I could have shot the mess on the floor!!) So with the beautiful ribbon I was sent yesterday from Jane Means I chose the raspberry stitched grosgrain and wondered what I could do with it. I came up with this.

I stuck the ribbon to the seam at the back of the lampshade with a dab of fabric glue. I wanted to bring more attention to the stitch and wanted to add something a little whimsical as it was for a little girl’s room. I thought about using the ribbon to trace around the flowers but that didn’t really work. I thought about adding a bow to the pink ribbon but that wasn’t enough. When Jane’s ribbon arrived it was in neatly folded loops and I wanted to keep them that way until I had decided how to store them, so I clipped them with clothes pegs.

I thought they looked like dragonflies so this gave me an idea. I wanted to add another colour to the lampshade and blue is used in my daughter’s curtains and bedding so I chose a blue. I made a dragonfly with loops of squadron blue stitched grosgrain ribbon and a peg with some washi tape on. I stuck this to the shade with my glue gun and voila!

I was pleased with this and I think it sits in her room nicely. More importantly she likes it and it isn’t a plastic pink and I haven’t had to buy a new lampshade. Win, win I think! Here it is again in situ.