Saturday 30 June 2012

Upcycling a light shade into 3 pictures......

You may remember that back in November I witnessed the birth of my beautiful God-Daughter, my Tiny Angel.  Since then I have posted some of the makes for her including Bunting (from an old blind....remember that fabric for later in this post!), Baby Slippers and Butterflies.

Well Tiny Angel Mummy bought a lovely bedroom set from Mamas and Papas, unfortunately the centre light shade was redundant as there is no centre (or ceiling) light in Tiny Angels room.

Not wanting to waste anything, Tiny Angel Mummy gave it to me AGES ago and asked me if there was anything I could do with it!

Ha-ha....she knows me well, I love sprinkling Crafty Dust to morph objects for one use into something totally different AND (as she well knows....!)....if you throw down the gauntlet, I'm not one to shy away from a challenge.

So....... what to do with a square, central light shade like this......


I started by unpicking the four side to give four separate sections.....


I delved into the stash (which doesn't seem to be getting any smaller despite having finished some projects!!) and found leftover fabric from the Bunting and some floss in the bright colours of the Mamas and Papas bedset.....


I trawled my magazines and yet again a free template sheet from Simply Homemade offered me exactly the font I wanted to use......


I used the same applique adhesive sheets as I used in the 'Love' cushion and traced the letters from the template onto the sheet like this......


I laid the letters on the scrap fabric and peeled of one side of paper to stick it down, it's great stuff...you can just keep repositioning it.....I got it how I wanted it and cut out the letters......


I then positioned the pieces onto a section of light shade and just free-stitching with lime thread....stitched outlines onto the letters.....

 

One of the sides of the light shade had a mouse embroidered onto it, one of the other creatures on the bedset is an elephant.  I laid a blank section of the shade over the embroidered mouse and traced the main parts of the mouse....I just chandged his nose to a trunk and played with the ears.....I did it with water erasable pen......


I used my floss stash......

 
...to embroider the elephant......


Once this was done I started the business of mounting my sections onto this.....


....3 joined canvases picked up for about £6 in The Works

I started by using the canvases as a template to roughly cut the excess from the fabric (with a bit of overlap)....


I did the same with some white felt to the exact size of the canvas  (wadding was too thick and it just needed a little cushion of something between the canvas and fabric).... 


I used Hi-Tack Fabric Glue to paint the canvases ready to bond the felt......


I used the same fabric glue to paint a strip around the sides of the canvases so that I could stick down the light shade sections....I decided to cover the join with this......


...... some Rouleaux ribbon from our local haberdashers The Cloth Store.  Beautiful isn't it?

I wrapped the ribbon around the canvas to cover the fabric edge, I fixed it with the fabric glue like this.......


I secured it at the top of each picture with a tiny upholstery tack........


So there we have it.......

A light shade upcycled with the help of some Crafty Dust into a personalised picture for my Tiny Angel, Holly......

...want to see?

Oh!  Go on then.............................Ta-Daaaahhhhh!...................


(sorry about the slanty picture!!)  Do you love it?

I'm quietly quite proud of this and so pleased the light shade got used.  I do hope that Tiny Angel and her Mummy like it.....

Off to do more things now....got to sort out Flossie-van this afternoon....then I will share some pics of the old girl!

See you soon,

Nora xx



1 comment:

  1. Wow so creative! I love the little elephant and mouse. What a great idea. I'm sure it will be treasured by Tiny Angel and her Mummy.

    ReplyDelete

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