How to Paint a Lampshade

This was such a fun little DIY. And easy too. I was giving this corner of my living room a little face-lift a couple of weeks ago (Yes, yes. I'll show you real soon!) and my plain old off-white, kinda stained, nothing special lamp shade really started to bug me again.

A few hours later, when I was sitting in the parking lot at Kennedy's school, I found myself dreaming up ideas for changing it up a bit. As usual, the simplest, easiest idea won out. I wasn't sure if it was going to work, but I could always just cover it in fabric. Or use one of the umpteen lamp shades hiding out in my basement.

I asked Kennedy if she would help me and, of course, she agreed! What kid wouldn't want to do something ridiculous like paint their mom's lampshade?

We used a sample pot of regular wall paint that I had in a Martha Stewart color called Crevecoeur.

We basically just slopped it on until we thought it looked pretty good. All in all it took about 20 minutes. Notice the little piece of after-school granola bar sitting on the coffee table there.

Here's the trick: When you think it looks good and all the spots are covered, you put the shade back on the lamp, turn it on, and continue painting it until no more light shines through. It was incredibly easy to get good coverage, actually. You can see that after our initial covering, there were only a few little areas that needed extra paint!

I absolutely love this lamp in the corner of our room now. It focusses the light perfectly and the dark shade really classes things up quite a bit.

More photos of the whole corner refresh coming up soon!

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