Mrs Smyth Creates... an Anthropologie knock off light shade for $18.

When I was pregnant with Millie I started reading about how so many of my pregnant friends were creating these fabulous colour-coordinated nurseries, with themes and rainbows and kittens oh my!
My S and I painted our bedroom, I sewed a doona cover, made a chair and some wall hangings. We put my dressing table out, and a cot in. Done!
Then Millie needed to move out of our room (or we needed her out... one of those. At any rate, it involved us getting more than 4 hours of broken sleep per night). So Mr S cleaned out the spare room one day and it became Millie's bedroom. It needed painting, and some different curtains, and perhaps some furnishings...
Yeah. Okay.
So we put up her fairy lights and wall hangings and made it look nice-ish, but it wasn't a play room. Functional for sleeping, but it still had a queen bed in there and there was zero floor space.
I made some curtains a few months ago, but it was still pretty sparse.
Mr S bought a new drill last week (another story involving the bathroom renovation and how every reno job requires a more expensive tool...) and dismantled the bed. We moved a few things around (I say we, Mr S moved everything and I was surprised this had all happened) and it suddenly started to look like a fun place to be.
We'd been talking about light fittings for awhile - Mr S excels at buying great light fittings. I'm kind of oblivious to most things above my head, e.g. cobwebs, washing, light fittings. But I'd seen a tutorial and given my crafty burst, I decided it was time.

The Design*Sponge Tutorial

You need:

1. An 18" rice paper light fitting ($8.95, Bunnings)
2. A plastic bowl to put the fitting in.
3. Hot glue gun and several glue sticks (I think I used 5).
4. A cup of tea.
5. A sleeping toddler.
6. iView.
7. 150 white muffin papers ($5).
8. A light fitting extender cord ($7, Bunnings).
9. Jam Rollettes for energy.
10. About an hour of time.

Here's what I did:

1. Take your light fitting and put it in a plastic bowl. This makes it FAR easier to turn around whilst you're gluing. Turn on your hot glue gun, load up iView and get your tea and jam rollettes ready.

2. Start by gluing your muffin papers in a line around the light shade. I went all around one way, then the other. I also clustered the papers around either opening of the shade to give me a good direction to head in with my glue gun.

3. Tea. Jam Rollettes. Laugh at Shaun Micallef.
4. Turn your shade around and glue, glue glue! Squash the papers together a bit to give a more uneven, petal-like effect. When you get the other side of the fitting, it's ok to gently rest it on the glued papers so you can glue the bare side. It didn't squash mine at all.

5. Admire your handiwork and feel like a total craft genius. This was exceptionally surprisingly easy. More tea. More rollettes (reward!).

6. Balance yourself and your bump carefully on a chair in your daughter's room (once she is awake of course. Never wake a sleeping baby!). Wonder why you feel unsteady. Gently ask toddler to stop rocking the chair. Reassure her that it's not the end of the world.

7. Swear at the difficulty of attaching the fitting to the cord. Tell your toddler 'Mummy said Fudge, Millie.' Get cord attached and turn light on and off.

8. Continue to feel like craft genius.

There you have it! Pretty straightforward and I think it looks like a million trillion bucks!

Tell me, have you ever made your own lightshades? Do you have pictures? Now that I am a craft genius, I am addicted to lightshades and wish to make more.