Sticking
this up since I've mentioned it to a few people online and requests
have been made. I have a strange fixation with making bows out of
wire-edged ribbon. I love them. It's my favorite Christmas decoration:
sheer and sparkly bows lit with lights. To indulge that love all year
round, I threw a bunch of different color bows at my lampshade, and it
casts such a lovely mellow light on my bedside table it has become my
favorite craft project from the past couple years.
Ingredients:- 1 cheap cloth lamp shade
- Approx 100 yds wire-edged ribbon
- Scissors
- Craft wire
- Bandaids
Directions:
- Shred the fabric/material off your lampshade to leave only the wire frame. If your cheap lampshade is only a couple wire circles connected by plastic, you'll need a different lampshade. Something like this, which has a metal skeleton beneath the fabric.
- Make 30-ish big(6" diameter) poofy bows with your ribbon (More or less depending on your lampshade size to start with. If you don't know how to make a big poofy bow, this is a good tutorial, but rather than just wrapping the ribbon the width of my hand, I wrap it to be about 6" long when the loop is flattened.)
- Tie some bows on lampshade skeleton and fluff
- Apply bandaids-- that wire-edged ribbon is evil and pokey
- Tie some more bows on the lampshade skeleton and fluff
- Make sure none of the ribbon touches the bulb, and please please use a bulb that doesn't get hot. May start fire otherwise!
That is gorgeous! I love it! (And I'm not usually into fru fru, either!)
ReplyDeleteIt's so over-the-top ridiculous, I have to love it. It's like a glowing, bedside topiary. The ribbon used was the 2" wide stuff, and many different kinds. There's two different gold+white ones, and 2 different white ones(one sheer and one with iridescent glitter), sheer pink, sheer lavender...
DeleteAnd I'm still adding to it, everytime I see a new sheer spool of ribbon at the dollar tree(one bow per one spool size, for $1), I buy and find somewhere to wedge it in.
Thinking of rearranging the bows so it's more calico and *orderly* random instead of just plain random.
I'm always terrified of draped lamps starting fires so I'm glad you've put that reminder on! It looks very pretty but I'm so lacking in artistic skills that it wouldn't look like that if I tried!
ReplyDeleteWe had a house fire in 2009, so I'm exceedingly cautious about flammable stuff. I only use the eco-friendly bulbs, and a 60-watt-equiv eco-friendly barely puts off any heat, so it doesn't ever get hot. But, I'd not use old-standard bulbs with it for sure.
DeleteI'm a big proponent of attempting any new crafty endeavors. It's all like writing -- once you become used to the medium, it stops resembling crap :) The first few tries? Not really fit for public viewing...