{31 Days to a Brand New Room}Day 26: A Flowery Lamp Shade

If you're joining us for the first time today, welcome!  This is day 26 of a 31-day series about how to give a room in your home a brand new look, from top to bottom, completely DIY.  

You'll find links to all the other posts in the series here, if you're interested.

I'm taking a day off after that big duvet project this week.  Today we're just going to refashion a lampshade -- quick and easy.  I found a cute navy blue drum shade on clearance at Hobby Lobby a while back for $3.  I had no plans for it, but I was thinking it might end up in the boys' room.  Until I saw it was the perfect shade of blue to match the walls in this room, that is.  And I just happened to find a shade-less lamp at Ikea for about $5 .  It's like it was meant to be!

Of course I couldn't leave the shade plain {the horror!}.  Sis picked out some cute white crocheted flowers at Hobby Lobby that we arranged and hot glued right onto the shade.  Nothing revolutionary, but it gives a custom, finished look. 

 The point of this post is two-fold.  First, to show you that you sometimes have to work with what you can find {or what you can afford} when working on a strict budget.  And it's FINE!  This is not the lamp I would have chosen for this room if I had unlimited funding, but for $5 I knew I could make it work.  Plus, it has a really cool on/off foot switch on the cord.  We stuck the switch to the side of the bedside table so Sis can turn it on and off without even sitting up in bed.  That's pretty cool.  And a burlap lampshade for $3?!  Can't beat that.

Second, to show you how easy it is to add a little extra "oomph" and give any boring old project a custom look.  This whole project only took me about 5 minutes, but the addition of those simple crocheted flowers elevate the hum drum lamp to a whole new level.

Don't be bummed if you have to use a few things you don't think you absolutely love in the beginning,  Sometimes the simplest fix can change your mind entirely.  Come back tomorrow to see how our Craig's List wing back chair gets a major facelift!