$3 DIY Lampshade Makeover

This lampshade makeover started because I wanted to add some teal accents in the living room & decided to paint a side table. The table was a light olivey color & the lampshade color looked good with it. However, once I painted the table, I felt the burgundy was too harsh against the new color so I decided to update the lampshade.

Now that I made that decision, I searched Pinterest to see what type of makeover to do. As I mentioned earlier, I've used fabric before but there are so many other options and I wanted to try something different this time. After looking around for a bit, I decided to try jute twine. I found some at the $1 store. It was sold in a pack of 3 and since I didn't know how much I would need, I bought 2 packages.

The first step was to remove the trim & then the burgundy fabric. I wasn't sure if I also wanted to remove the inner fabric, so I carefully cut off the outer fabric with a small pair of scissors.

When the outer fabric was removed, I could see that the inner fabric did not sit flush with the frame. I really liked the curvature of the frame and thought that maybe the jute would snug the fabric up to the frame as I added it.

Starting at the top of the lampshade, I tied the jute to the frame. I then started wrapping the frame & inner fabric with the jute. After finishing a small section, I could see that the inner fabric was preventing the jute from laying flat against the frame and the jute was not helping the fabric to sit closer to the frame.

Although I liked the soft light the inner fabric provided when the bulb was on, I decided to remove it anyway.

Once I removed the inner fabric, the jute I had wrapped was loose. Instead of taking it off, I just tightened it one strand at a time.

If you've worked with jute before, you know that it is thin and a bit scratchy. I chose not to wear gloves but I do think it's a good idea to wear a pair.

Since the twine is so thin, it did take a while to wrap the entire frame. Each time I finished roll, I tied the new string to the existing one. Then, as I wrapped the frame, it was easy to tuck the ends between the strands. Since the frame is wider at the bottom than at the top, there will be some space between the strands along the bottom.

To my surprise, I used all 6 rolls before finishing! I went back to the $1 store the next day & bought another 3 pack. I ended up using about 2/3 of the 7th roll. Each roll is 100ft so I figure this lampshade took 675 to finish.

After all the jute was on the frame, I snipped off the longer 'hairs' on both the inside & outside of the frame. We use an LED bulb that doesn't get hot, but I thought it was safer to make sure there were no long jute hairs on the inside of the frame.

With some paint that I had on hand, I also changed the color of the TV remote holder from burgundy to teal. I am loving the new look of this table! This project cost $3 and I have jute left for a future project.

Video of the process