Lamp Shade Redo~ Old French Writing

I was recently perusing the latest Ballard Designs catalog and fell in love with this lamp:

And then there are these gorgeous gems at Pottery Barn

 

and then, by great coincidence I found this wonderful blog Beauty In The Attempt and her fabulous knock-off and knew I had to try to make my own.  

So we begin with some digital scrapbooking files I already had of old French writing and postmarks.  I downloaded the Bryon font mentioned in the blog above and used some other cool fonts like Chopin Script and made my design.  Then off to Staples to have it blown up to 18x24.

I then traced a pattern on some wrapping paper so I would make sure I had a good fit before cutting my actual design.  I found a great resource HERE  for how to draw a pattern for a lamp shade.  This was the hard part!

So I cut traced and cut and trimmed and finally glued just the seam and waalaa:

 

I spent $1.00 for the shade at thrift store, $1.99 for enlarged copy at Staples and the lamp is, again, from my former life selling home decor.  It was gold, I spray painted it white.  Final cost ~ under $3.00 for a beautiful, shabby lamp that I adore!

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