Dannells' 2024 Blog Highlights

As another eventful year comes to a close, it’s time to celebrate a Dannells tradition — reflecting on our top blog highlights from 2024! This year has been nothing short of extraordinary, filled with exciting new product launches, in-depth tutorials, inspiring book releases, and, of course, our personal favourite — the ever-popular Meet the Maker interviews.

Our goal has always been to spark creativity and empower you to craft stunning, bespoke lampshades. We hope that this year’s blog posts have done just that! So, as we bid farewell to 2024, let’s revisit some of the standout moments that has made this year so special.

New Lampshade Making Products

2024 has been a year of providing new lampshade shapes, sizes, and accessories to help you develop news skills and increase you lampshade making creativity!

After many requests from our makers, we introduced two new sizes of Conical Lampshade Making Kit – 25cm and 50cm – to meet popular interior trends. Our 25cm diameter Conical Lampshade Making Kit, is a petite version of existing sizes, ideal for a plain or all over patterned covering as a neat table lamps, while our new 50cm diameter, is a true statement lampshade perfect for a modern or antique stand lamp.

In the same vein, it was ‘The Year of the Scallop’, as we introduced Scalloped Edged Self Adhesive Lampshade Panels, in four different sizes, including our personal favourite, the small, but eye-catching Candle Clip size. Each size can be made in both paper or fabric, as per the step-by-step tutorials we created.

Building on this, we took the scalloped trend to a different level, with our 4 sizes of Scalloped Ringsets - 20cm, 30cm, 40cm and 60cm - along with engineered pre-scored scalloped panels, to help make this unique shape, easier to make for all levels of lampshade makers.

Not stopping at helping you make lampshades, in 2024 we helped you accessorise them too, as we extended our range of Creative Cables products, working closely with this lighting giant to bring vintage, contemporary, wooden lamp holders, cables and lighting accessories. And to help you find that perfect lampshade covering, we introduced new fabric ranges including our 19 colours of Hessian Fabrics, and our stunning new textured Boucle Cotton Slub Fabric.

Hacks, Tutorials and Tips

Each year we aim to educate, engage and inspire, and the Dannells blog did not disappoint in 2024! Aside from our tutorials to support new and existing makers to use our new products – Scalloped Ringsets, Scalloped Edge Panels, Boucle Cotton Slub Fabric, Square Waste Paper Bin Making Kit, we also provide tips and tutorials on some old favourites!

Readers have loved our tips on Making Metallic Lampshades, a stunning way to elevate your lampshade making once you have the know-how, and our Pattern Matching Fabric for Large Lampshades, which is a popular question on our Lampshade Makers Facebook Group, received a similar response.

Taking inspiration from our makers, we had fun designing, creating and photographing our Extreme Conical Lampshade, made with our 12.5cm single duplex ring, and our Multi Textured Lampshades, using our Hessian Fabric, both of which helped you extend you lampshade making skills in different ways! 

Meet the Makers

Our favourite part of hosting the Dannells blog is meeting our makers, and in 2024 we interviewed six professional lampshade makers, who creative lampshade using their talents and skills in illustration, silk painting, oil painting, fabric design and machine embroidery.

As well as sharing their inspiration, they talk about their lampshade making journeys and how they have developed successful businesses – a must read for any budding lampshade entrepreneur!

Meet our 2024 Lampshade Makers:

• Mountain and Molehill

• Lamps Studio Design

• Lily Greenwood

• Gilhoolie Bespoke Lampshades

• Koko Designs

• Love Frankie

Books

Finally, it was an exciting year for everyone at Dannells, as one of our esteemed lampshade makers and Facebook Group contributors, Jane Warren, launched her much anticipated book, The Complete Guide to Making Lampshades.

Packed with practical and inspirational guides that teach you how to make a wide range of beautiful and bespoke lampshades, from her 12 years of professional lampshade making, we had the pleasure of talking to Jane about her book, her lampshade making practise and the process of becoming an author, in our Meet the Author interview .

We can’t praise Jane’s book highly enough and it should definitely have a place in every lampshade maker’s library!

We'd like to take this opportunity for all your support in 2024. We've loved seeing all of your lampshade making creations and can't wait to do it all again in 2025!

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