How to DIY a Lamp Shade for $6

We're BACK!!!! I had a great week off, I read a book, I went to bed early, I woke up late. We entertained friends, we put the finishing touches on some projects, but mostly we relaxed,  and soaked up the sun!

Things are back in full swing around here! And I'm so excited to share with you the first project I tackled . . . a Custom DIY Lamp Shade.

I wanted a patterned shade, but it also had to be a perfect drum shade . . . no taper! I had no luck finding one for less then $70 which I find to be a ridiculous price for a lamp shade, so when I found this at Ikea I was intrigued. When I saw that it was only $5.99 I decided to take a risk and attempt to recover my own!!

The Ikea Lobbo shade is basically a flat plastic lamp shade that, like everything else at Ikea, needs to be assembled! It comes with the metal bars and they fasten through 3 little holes on the side of the shade (pictured above).  The shade fastens at the back with little notches (pictured below).

It was seriously easy and seriously cheap to do:
You'll Need:

• The Lobbo shade kit $5.99 
• and Half a yard of Fabric, our fabric was $14 a yard so $7 for fabric. 
• Spray Glue 
• A hot glue gun and hot glue sticks

Total Cost, including Glue was approx $15. 

Step 1: 
Cut you fabric close to the same size as the plastic, it doesn't have to be exact just close will do.

Step 2: 
Spray your Spray Glue onto the plastic and then lay the piece of fabric on top! Pressing down as you go, making sure there are no wrinkles. It was seriously easy!!!
Wait 1 hour or how ever long your spray glue says to wait, ours was 1 hour.

Step 3:
 While your glue is setting, cut a thin piece of fabric as wide as you like ours was 3 inches wide. The piece of fabric should be as long as your plastic piece.

 Step 4:
Iron your fabric in half, then re open. Fold in the left side into the middle,  then do the same for the right side.

You should end up with something that resembles bias tape. You'll need to do this process twice, once for the top of the shade and once for the bottom.

 Step 5:
Trim off excess fabric from the plastic.

Once you've trimmed the fabric, assemble your shade by interlocking the tabs at the back, Ikea includes instructions for this part!! ;) It's pretty straightforward but a little bit finicky! Attach the metal structure in the middle.  It should look like this:

Step 6:
Once your shade is assembled then you can attached the strips of fabric we created in step 3 and 4.  Do this after you assembled your shade, it would be easier to do it before while the shade is flat but it won't work as well and you'll have puckering.
So once it's assembled attached the trim fabric using hot glue, glue the front on first,

then glue the back on.

It should be neat and tidy when you're done!!

Then you're done! It was surprisingly easy! Dare I say it was even a little FUN!!
And the finished product was better then I thought it would be . . .

 I was so happy with it I went straight back to Ikea and bought two more Lobbo shades! I don't know where I'm going to put the other two, but I do know that this one is going to become a hanging pendant in the basement, hopefully we'll get it up this week!! :)