New lamp for Rian's room

Slowly but surely I am working on girlifying Rian's room.  I'm going with a theme...kind of.  Birds, turquoise/teal, different shades of purples, and silver.  I love all the bird art going on out there, birds are pretty to decorate with. Just love birds!  Well, actually if I'm going to be honest, I only love birds as long as they're not real. Real birds can be quite scary.  And dirty.  And loud.  But after I get done with her room I might be all birded out. Yeah and I'm pretty sure birded isn't a word, oh well.

So here's Rian's lamp before:

We had picked out such a nice lamp base, and hated the plain off-white lamp shade that was with it. So I decided I would try my hand at creating a stencil and painting the lamp shade to give it some personality, and to make it fit in her room better.  I googled different bird images until I found one I liked, and then printed it off on regular white printer paper.  I then turned the page over and traced the outline of the image with a pencil.  Next I laid the image print side up on a piece of contact paper, and then rubbed all around the outline of the image in order to get my pencil traced outline to show up on the contact paper.  This was my first time doing anything like that, and I have to admit I was surprised the trick worked. The fourth step was to cut out the image using a craft knife/razor blade.  I then placed the contact paper on my lamp shade where I wanted it to go.  I made sure it was smooth, no air bubbles around the edges, and got right to painting.  I just used some craft paint I found Joann's Fabric Superstore for a mere .59 cents and a spinge type brush.  Once the area was painted I peeled away my DIY stencil and admired my new skills.  

 

Isn't that better than plain off-white?  I thought so.  But it still needed something more to me.  More color.  So I took some ribbon in two different shades of purple and added it to the bottom of the lamp shade using a handy hot glue gun. 

And this is the final product.  It's cute and fun, and easy enough that anyone could do.  Yould easily add more stenciling, or different ribbons.  The best part is you end up with a lamp shade that's unique and fills your needs.  You don't have to settle for boring off-white, plain jane, run of the mill.  I think the whole project took me an hour, and that's with taking breaks to feed my 7 week old baby, and play with our 21 month old son.

 

 I'm linking up my lamp makeover to Shanty2chic's party.  You should check them out. They have some awesome ideas.