New lampshades can cost a fortune, so whenever we can update the ones we already own, I'm all for it. Here is a DIY rope lampshade project I actually did last year, but in the craziness of life, it never quite made it onto the blog.
Our old house was a Queen Anne bungalow, and not all of the furnishings and accessories work in our contemporary rustic beach house.
These lampshades were silk and just a bit too fussy for the beach, so I dressed them down a bit.
I was inspired by the piles of colorful fishing rope the nearby fishing fleet uses for their daily catch. A trip to the local hardware store yielded several colorful rolls of inexpensive poly rope. All the pretty colors made me happy, so I bought an assortment!
To update the lampshades, I began by pulling off any trim work on the original silk shades, leaving only the lined silk shade to use as a gluing base. I pulled out my hot glue gun, and simply began gluing the rope round and round. It is helpful to use a low temp gun for this, as the high temp guns can melt the poly rope. Each time I started a new color, I simply tucked the end of the new rope under the adjacent rope, and overlapped the raw end of the previous rope.
This project took a bit more material than I expected, and I ended up going back to the hardware store for more rope. I was crushed to find that the new dye lots were not even close to what I had previously purchased. I ended up getting a little creative, and pulling off some of the rope I had already glued, then added some new stripes.
After a year in the house, the rope shades have not faded at all, so I am very pleased.
Expect to use ten or twelve packages of rope (about $2 each) to cover two medium sized lampshades. You can also expect to use dozens and dozens of glue sticks!
We love how our beachy lampshade DIY turned out. The plastic rope and stripes reference the fishing fleet we watch from our living room windows, and I can't think of any material more perfect for the project.
If you enjoyed this tutorial, please subscribe to House Revivals so you won't miss any of the great projects we have planned. We would love it if you wold like and subscribe to us on Facebook, as well, so you won't miss any of the fun between posts. Feel free to use the icons below to share links to this post on your favorite social media sites.
To see another lampshade makeover project (made from wild pants), click here.
Thanks for stopping by!
Our old house was a Queen Anne bungalow, and not all of the furnishings and accessories work in our contemporary rustic beach house.
These lampshades were silk and just a bit too fussy for the beach, so I dressed them down a bit.
I was inspired by the piles of colorful fishing rope the nearby fishing fleet uses for their daily catch. A trip to the local hardware store yielded several colorful rolls of inexpensive poly rope. All the pretty colors made me happy, so I bought an assortment!
To update the lampshades, I began by pulling off any trim work on the original silk shades, leaving only the lined silk shade to use as a gluing base. I pulled out my hot glue gun, and simply began gluing the rope round and round. It is helpful to use a low temp gun for this, as the high temp guns can melt the poly rope. Each time I started a new color, I simply tucked the end of the new rope under the adjacent rope, and overlapped the raw end of the previous rope.
This project took a bit more material than I expected, and I ended up going back to the hardware store for more rope. I was crushed to find that the new dye lots were not even close to what I had previously purchased. I ended up getting a little creative, and pulling off some of the rope I had already glued, then added some new stripes.
After a year in the house, the rope shades have not faded at all, so I am very pleased.
Expect to use ten or twelve packages of rope (about $2 each) to cover two medium sized lampshades. You can also expect to use dozens and dozens of glue sticks!
We love how our beachy lampshade DIY turned out. The plastic rope and stripes reference the fishing fleet we watch from our living room windows, and I can't think of any material more perfect for the project.
If you enjoyed this tutorial, please subscribe to House Revivals so you won't miss any of the great projects we have planned. We would love it if you wold like and subscribe to us on Facebook, as well, so you won't miss any of the fun between posts. Feel free to use the icons below to share links to this post on your favorite social media sites.
To see another lampshade makeover project (made from wild pants), click here.
Thanks for stopping by!