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If you are venturing out for daily exercise or essential food shopping seeing the array of rainbows emblazoned across the windows of nearly every house is a real heartwarming moment. The support for our keyworkers has been phenomenal and the rainbow is quickly becoming synonymous with a huge 'thank you' to those that deserve it most.
Along the same theme, we've been playing with our Needcraft ribbon shade kit and came up with this creative and fun #lampshadehack. Our Ribbon shade kits is a clever variation on our usual lampshade making kits, wrapping vertical ribbons around the shade from top to bottom. By weaving the colours of the rainbows horizontally across the shade we've proudly created our very own special 'thank you' rainbow shade.
What you'll need
Rainbow grosgrain ribbon in a variety of colours – 22 mm wide (we bought ours at The Ribbon Rooms)
- Yellow - 13 metres
- Red, pink, green, orange, purple and blue – 80 cm
Finishing tool from a previous Needcraft lampshade kit or old loyalty card
Fabric scissors
Scissor for cutting tape
How to make your rainbow shade
1. Follow the instructions included in the kits for making the shade, until you have rolled the rings and sealed the seams on the PVC giving you a bare white shade
2. Starting next to spoke tucking the end of the yellow ribbon, using a tucking in tool from a previous kit or an old loyalty card.
3. Work the ribbon around the shade vertically with barely any overlap between each length of ribbon on the outside of the shade. The idea is not to be able to see the white of the PVC and only to have a very small overlap. The ribbon should be tight and on the inside of the shade the ribbon will sit on a slight diagonal.
4. Continue round the shade and at the spoke tuck the spoke behind the ring. Continue until you have one strip to go then. Leave enough ribbon loose at the bottom of the shade to wrap vertically around the shade twice.
6. Starting with the red ribbon at the top of your shade (remember this will depend on whether or not you want the shade to be for a table lamp or for a pendant shade), firstly seal the end of the ribbon with some Sellotape.
7. Starting at the gap between the yellow ribbons gently feed this through over and under the yellow ribbon strips, using the sealed end to easily guide the red ribbon through.
8. When the ends of the red ribbon meet, leave the ends loose and move onto the Pink ribbon, repeating step 7. Repeat with all of the ribbons until all of the colours are woven through the vertical yellow ribbons.
9. Starting again with the red ribbon, take the taped end and add a small piece of the double-sided tape from the kit on the underside of the ribbon, across the width.
10. Pull the red ribbon so it sits tightly around the circumference of the shade. Before peeling the backing off the double-sided tape, lay the ribbons over each other, Cut the ribbon on the bottom allowing enough space for the tape to stick in place.
11. Remove the backing and stick in place to create a continuous red ribbon around the shade. Repeat with the remaining coloured ribbons.
12. Pull the loose yellow ribbon over the joins in the coloured ribbons
13. From the inside tuck the yellow ribbon under the lampshade ring using your tucking under tool or loyalty card. Snip off any excess fabric and tuck under and visible ribbon.
14. Enjoy your finished rainbow shade!
Show us your shade
Don't forget that you can enter our monthly #memadeshade Instagram competition, by sharing your shade made from a Needcraft lampshade making kit. For more details read our blog post here or find us on Instagram @needcraft.
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