DIY Triangle Lamp Shade

Out of all the decor I’ve collected over the years, my owl lamp is one of my favorites. (Much to my mother’s disgust. She hates the little guy. ;)) I found this lamp when I was in college, my friends and I were walking around this neighborhood-wide garage sale on Berry Street in Greencastle, Indiana. The garage sales were full of things like an entire set of N*Sync bobble head dolls, strange clothes from the 90s, and old barn windows– and this owl lamp. There were two, actually. My friend Kelsey and I saw them and decided they had to be ours. We probably would have paid $20 each for the lamps, but we asked the lady selling the lamps how much she wanted for them. “Make me an offer,” she said. Kelsey and I tittered off to the side, $10? $20? We just wanted those owls. We came back to the lady with polite, hesitant smiles and said, “$5?” “Sold.”

And that is how Pidwidgeon and Errol came into our lives for $2.50 each. ;D

Recently I had the opportunity to participate in Lamps.com’s lampshade contest where I received a white lamp shade to decorate. (Go and vote for your favorite shade and you can win $100 to Lamps.com!) 🙂 I spent a lot of time on Pinterest trying to brainstorm the best lamp shade with my owl, but I finally decided that the geometric triangle pattern I’ve been really into lately. I thought about doing black and white triangles, but chose white on white instead. I’ve never really done white on white anything… ever… but it’s really grown on me. You can have these crazy patterns and designs, but they still look a bit refined when they’re white on white. 🙂

Here is the plain white lamp shade I received.

The first thing you need to do is measure the space that you want to fill with triangles. The height of that space on my lamp shade was 9″ so I decided to cut out 1″ triangles.

Small note: It is much easier to cut out triangles if you have a boyfriend who remembers how to do high school math. 🙂 After you cut out all of the triangles, you just need to take your loaded glue gun and start glueing them to the shade. It’s a good task to catch up on all the 30 Rock you’ve been missing. 😉

I am really excited about the results– I think it totally fits with the 1960s-Royal-Tennenbaums-meets-Indiana-rural-expats vibe we’ve got going. Ha. 😉

PS– Vote. Win $100. 🙂