Lost Cause Lamp Shade

I have to apologize because I didn't take pictures of the process that it took to get to this lamp shade...oops! Honestly, the entire time I was thinking, "I hate this, this is going to be so horribly ugly." You may still be thinking that, but I definitely like how it turned out! I can give you the details of how I made this and that will have to suffice. What started this whole thing what our move to Okinawa. We unpacked our boxes that had traveled so far and found two extremely crushed lamp shades, too far gone to try and salvage. For any of you that have ever shopped at a base exchange of any kind you know that when it comes to things like this it's slim pickins. It also turns out that most of the lamp shades I found out in town weren't conducive to my lovely American lamp (thank you Target). Thus began my journey to create the perfect lampshade.

At first I went ahead and bought a lamp shade at the local base exchange. That was a mistake. I got it home and ran to my little lamp posts and turns out the American lamp shade from the base exchange wasn't conducive with my American lamp (thank you Target). Also, I didn't realize that my lamp was a little smaller than most, so my lamp looked like it was playing "dress up" with it's mom's lamp shade, ridiculous! So I had no choice...I pulled out my exacto knife (that's my newest solution to the world's problems...we'll see if it overtakes spray paint). I cut away at the huge, oversized and quite ugly lamp shade and made some a bit smaller and much more fitting to my little lamp stand. The material is actually an old skirt that I retired a few years back. It's just glued to the old lamp shade. I cut up an old white tshirt into circles to create the floral embellishments. You just fold the circles in half and then in half again and arrange as you want.

Last but not least I found this great button. I think it came from the huge collection that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. I offset it and added some more floral embellishments around it too. I'll be honest, I was shocked with the finish product. It wasn't looking good for 3/4 of the project and I almost aborted the mission several times and wrote it off as a lost cause. I'm glad I stuck it out and am pleased with what now sits on my nightside shelf (I found that on etsy)! Enjoy!