Jamie Gottschall IndomitableStyle: Decorating: Lampshades 101

Do you look through decorating books and magazines and wonder where people find such spectacular lampshades? They are never like the basic junky shades you get with your lamps. They always have an elegant trim or some special touch, and definitely no plastic wrapping. Well, I'm sad to report that for the thrifty shopper, they are probably nowhere near your budget, and even more difficult to come by, as they are custom made. Custom lampshades are valued at many hundreds of dollars and in some cases, thousands.

Am I telling you this to depress you? Not at all. If you are anything like me, I operate on the old adage, "where there's a will, there's a way!" I admit, my home is pretty fancy, but much of it comes from creative improvising.

Frustrated by just about every boring lampshade that came with such beautiful lamps, I found a custom lampshade shop on Manhattan's Upper East side. I spent well over. $500 for it. I brought them the amount of silk fabric they required to cover a new custom made wire frame, but forgot to buy trim. On that note, the price began to rise, as I could not resist the temptation of having a hand made, origami trim made out of the same fabric. I had never seen anything like it before. The fact that they were all hand stitched, not using a single ounce of glue, it what impressed me even more. What can I say, I'm a sucker for quality. I knew that purchasing anymore lampshades at that price was simply out of the question, but I had so many lampshades filling my house that I knew I couldn't settle for bland. This is exactly the type of scenario when my juices start flowing. I started asking myself how I could beautify lampshades on my on. After collecting inspiring decorating tare sheets of lamps I loved, I began taking mental notes of the details. What many of them had in common, was the elaborate way in which it was trimmed. With that said, I set out to my local craft store which sold fabrics and a variety of trims. I brought my lampshades along to get the size correct and pick out some really beautiful trims.

When I arrived at home, I whipped out my glue gun, locked and loaded a glue stick and wrangled up my lampshades and began trimming away.

It couldn't have been more simple, cautiously going around the edges of the bottom and the top of the lampshades and methodically placing the trim on top of the glue. Thanks it, it's that simple!