Making A Lamp shade

I have a project to fix my ceiling lamp as a part of that I wanted flower shaped lamp shades. But getting ones that fit and that I like is hard. So I figured I could make some and as usual checked Pinterest for inspiration finding this tutorial (I then followed basically none of this but still). 

My ceiling lamp needs some things before I can do the lampshades. But I have another lamp that also needs a shade and I've been looking for one of glass but haven't found one. So as a test I made on for this lamp instead.

I'd planned on using tissue paper like I think is in the video but at the store they were out of the white one and I ended up buying thin crepe paper instead. It's thicker and more structured so it holds it's shape and was probably a better choice.

I only bought white paper rather than colored partially because there wasn't any of the shade I wanted and if I did I'd have to buy four rolls which was way more paper than I actually needed. 

Tools and materials

There wasn't much materials needed for this. 

Crepe paper

Metal wire

Wire cutters 

Acrylic paint 

Paint brush

Lamp (I'd suggest thrift stores, lamps meant to have shades usually have them when bought new. Otherwise this or this might work.) 

Pencil

Scissors 

Glue

something to protect your work surface the painting got a bit messy.

Mostly these are things I had at home so all together this was a very cheap div. Eagle eyed readers might notice that some of these things aren't on the picture. There is a very good reason for this. Which is that I'd forgotten them until I needed them and didn't feel like taking a new picture.

What I did

I started with drawing out the petals using the first one as a stencil. It's important to make sure they are long enough to cover the light bulb, mine is thin so I make five of them have them overlapping. Realizing as I did it that this type of paper is terrible for drawing on. The lines barely show up and if I press too hard it tears.

Cutting out the petals makes it obvious that crepe paper also isn't good for cutting either it's soft and almost sticks to the scissors. But soon enough I had five large and five small petals.

Before I started painting them I tested the paint on a small scrap. I want the light to shine through and I worried the paint would be to thick. It wasn't so I went full steam ahead and painted them. 

I thinned out the paint with water to make sure light can still come through though this wasn't really needed.

An advantage of painting them compared to buying colored paper is that I could make a gradient on the petals. First painting the whole petal yellow then the base orange. The tiny petals I painted green. All of them I painted on both sides. 

Crepe paper isn't really good to paint and one broke while painting. I made a new one but was more careful going forward, limiting the amount of paint on the brush.

Leaving them to dry I turned to the attachment. The lamp is meant to have a shade and so there is already parts to fit it onto the lamp which made my life so much easier. All I needed to do was to cut a piece of wire and shape it to the attachment point. Taking it of and anchor the ends so it didn't unravel. I now had a wire circle.

At this point the petals was mostly dry and I attached them to the Wire. Folding the lowest edge of the petals and gluing it to the ring. The petals on the outside the fold on the inside so the ring it encased in the paper. I started with the large petals shaping them a bit as it did gluing them on with quite a bit of overlap. Then gluing the small petals on the outside, folding them out because it looked a bit thin and unbalanced.

I'd estimated I'd need five petals but only needed four so I took the best ones.

And then its just putting it all together. Screwing on the shade and lamp pieces. 

Results

I think it turned out quite decent though it looks a bit like a cucumber flower. There are some spots that could have used some more paint. The lamp  is in the art nouveau style so it probably had a shade not to dissimilar to this originally. The bulb is not an LED and does get hot, so it is a bit of a fire hazard. But I'll be careful not to leave it unattended. Regardless it works and now I know what to do for the ceiling lamp.