Shabby Chic Lamp Shades 1 of 4

Shabby Chic Lamp Shades 1 of 4

Wow!  Less than a week and I’m back already!  Cool! And woohoo!!! I finished the first four shabby chic lamp shades!  I still have one more to finish, as you will see later, plus I still need to cover my own shade from my bedroom.  I will post them when I get them finished!

Well, this all started when I went shopping in the clearance isle of my local Old Time Pottery.  I found lamp shades that were some of the ugliest in the whole store, hence why they were in the 70% off isle to begin with I’m sure.  Anyway, I bought three of them at a whopping .75 cents each and brought them home.

Once home I found that I already had a super cool cloth covered metal frame shade that I could also shabby-tize (I snitched it from my son’s room; he didn’t care! His HUMONGO computer monitor that my mama bought him is so big it has become his lamp shade/deflector now as it sits in front of his lamp anyway.  His grandparents spoil him something fierce! lol)

Now, before I get into the nitty gritty of the shades, just want to warn you I have made a separate blog entry for each shade as I took so many pics I’m afraid one post would either be over-whelming or it would bore you to tears! Lol

First I will start with my favorite; the shade I snitched from my son’s room (finished shade pictured above)!

It was a dusty dirty little critter but I cleaned it up.

These two pics show it in the center.  I was scrounging through my dwindling supply of vintage laces deciding which I would use with which shade.

I chose some vintage filet lace as you can see in this pic.  It had 2 silhouettes of a lady at each end so I trimmed them out and pinned them in place.

You can see the silhouette of the lady in this pic.  

I also chose a vintage crochet edging to add to the top and bottom.

I pinned the lace onto the fabric shade and hand stitched it in place. 
I then did the same with the crochet edging.

Unfortunately I didn't get a pic of the shade after those were added but I decided it was too plain and didn't have enough layers of lace.  So back to my supply of vintage laces again and I found some Irish lace featuring a Celtic cross.  I trimmed out 2 of the crosses and stitched them into the almost bare areas between the silhouettes so that all 4 sides now have either a cross or a silhouette.

I was 2 flags short of having enough of the crochet edging to finish the top of the shade so also cut out two of the flowers from the Irish lace to fill in the gaps.  I felt that they were too plain on their own so I used the technique that is used for Alencon lace and I stitched matching twine around the edges of the floret and in a spiral towards the middle.  I then took the closest match of lavender embroidery thread that I owned, that resembled the lavender border of the crochet edging.  I stitched the center of each of the florets with that thread and placed them in the gaps at the top of the shade.

One of the Celtic cross sides with the light on.

One of the silhouette sides with the light on.

I’ll be right back with another shade!  Stay tuned today!

This is on eBay for anyone interested in purchasing it!

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Crafting!