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The back to school chaos has finally subsided and as the autumn weather rolls in it can only mean that Halloween is around the corner. Spooky, sweet filled and a brilliant excuse to get creative, Halloween is now recognised as the UK’s second biggest celebration outside of Christmas.
We’ve rounded up 5 fantastic lampshade ideas to add a touch of Halloween magic to your home, ranging from eyeball infested shades for the kids to make to classy vintage comic book inspiration.
So, pick a shade from our favourites listed below that says ‘Happy Halloween, to sit aside your carved pumpkins and witch’s broom…
The Bare Bones shade
Easy to make up, this fun monochrome skeleton shade is made from a Dannells 20 cm lampshade making kit, but with the added ‘wow’ factor of orange vinyl covering on the inside of the shade.
If you’ve never used vinyl covering before check out our recent blog post here, that shows you the tips and tricks of how to apply this to your lampshade. We’ve 18 colours of vinyl to pick from including black, ready for your eerie makes!
Thrills and Spills
Lend a touch of vintage inspiration to your Halloween shade, like this one from Spooky Shades on Etsy, by using old comic book cut outs around the circumference of your shade. With a more grown up take on Halloween, this shade is ideal for a Ghosts and Ghouls drinks party!
Image: Comic book pendant shade Spooky Shades, Etsy – £67.80
As the comic book pages need to be applied in sections, rather than one continuous piece of fabric, it’s best to layout your pages in advance, making sure they are positioned to cover the PVC. Remove the backing paper and the kiss cuts from the lampshade making PVC, then apply carefully your pages on to the sticky side, leaving at least 1.5cm at the top and bottom for tucking under the lampshade frames.
Child’s Play
Halloween is a great excuse to get the kids making (and happily fills a morning of half term too!) and our next two Halloween lampshade ideas are easy, fun creative projects for all ages.
Available in most craft shops, felt is great for little fingers and simple to cut into spiders, bats, webs or even witches hats. We love this easy tutorial from Charisa Darling’s blog to ‘spookify’ an existing shade, but there’s nothing stopping you making the shade from one of our lampshade making kits. The felt spiders web effect would look great on an orange fabric coolie shade!
Our favourite crafting tip of Charisa’s is how to transfer your bat template outline using chalk – a simple method that’s useful for all sorts of projects!
Eye for an eye…
If you’re a patient parent then this shade is a must and your kids will love you for it! It’s gory, messy and fun make from Katie King for Homedit it would look great shining out from a Halloween window or for a party!
Just to note that this project uses a glue gun so it’s recommended that your children are 12 or above due to the heat of the glue. As an use double-sided tape (which comes as part of our lampshade making kits) or a craft glue, which will take longer to dry, but have the same effect.
Why not even try using two colours of acrylic paint to ooze down your shade?
Jack-O-Lantern-Kit
If you’re looking for a subtler shade for Halloween, our lantern making kits could be just the thing. At 10cm in diameter and 15 cm high they’re ideal for lighting up a corner, popping on a shelf or creating a dinner table centre piece. Simple to make, each lantern can be made in under ten minutes and uses only 35 x 20 cm of fabric, the equivalent of three lanterns per fat quarter.
Perfect for embellishing we’ve overlaid a 15 cm lace over the top of a plain orange cotton, both from Abakhan, for one lantern and added a pretty velvet and lace ribbon around the top of the other. Both were secured in place with the double-sided tape, which come as part of your lampshade making kit.
Each kit comes with four lanterns, so plenty of opportunity to try several combinations of fabric and trimming and includes four LED tea lights to light up you lanterns as soon as they are made!
So with just a dash of creativity, a fat quarter of fabric and a Dannells lampshade making kit… and maybe a couple of frogs legs thrown in for good measure, a handmade lampshade or lantern can be a great addition to your regular Halloween decorations.
Enjoy!