Worded Lampshade Tutorial

Let me show you what I made today!

My inspiration was a large lampshade I bought at a discount store that looks like this: (left)
And in place it in my studio it looks like this: (right)

Now, darn it, I didn't notice until I got home that there is slight flaw in the store bought shade. The wording is ALL upside down! You can't tell from a distance. And hubby couldn't even guess with 5 guesses!

The factory error made me happy for two reasons. 1) It reinforces that no one is perfect. 2) It means I now had a good reason that I didn't have to go back to the store to buy the two matching little ones for my two button jar lamps! But I still liked the fonts on linen look and I still needed to spice up some shades for these two button jar lamps! I determined the only thing really wrong with the old shades were their age and they were dull looking. The shades have a linen fabric-like surface on the outside. DING DING DING!

IDEA!
But we have a solution for that, don't we? Of course we can stamp our OWN assorted words on them. Stazon ink and my wording stockpile of wood and clear stamps to the rescue! Tips: Ink your stamp well. I used black ink but any color would work. I chose Stazon because I thought it would resist fading the best.

 

Go slowly and gently--place your hand behind the shade to give it strength or you might crack the shade by pressing too hard. Press firmly once and I found it better to move the hand under the shade against the stamp instead of pressing too hard with the stamp itself. Every now and then I even got adventurous and rolled a stamp "around the corner" to make the design look more continuous.

I had two identical shades to do so I stamped each word on both shades at the same time in roughly the same places. This made it go faster with no backtracking. Don't forget to stamp a bit on the 'trim' around the bottom and the top. It's like a bias binding but it does stamp pretty easily.

Unlit finished shade.

 Lit finished shade.

It worked! And really I used the shades I had , ink I had, and stamps in my stash for NO COST. Oh yeah, and I even stamped most of them RIGHT SIDE UP!