Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Closet lighting

My closet has a bare bulb for lighting. This is great providing making it very bright, but not so great because it's pretty unattractive. But I didn't want to install a new fixture as anything bigger would make getting things off the top most shelves a bit of a challenge. Finally it came to me, what if I made something like a paper lantern that fit over the bulb and diffused the light a bit but was easily removable to make things stored on the top shelf accessible? That would work, of course then I needed to figure out how and what to make.
Luckily it was a very rainy weekend which put some painting and outdoor plans on hold and provided time for fooling around with some sort of lighting solution. I pulled out supplies I had on hand, including an extra large embroidery hoop, a pile of small paper birds I had sew into strips for some unknown past project, and a bunch of pink tissue paper. I took the embroidery hoop apart and made a simple drum shade shape with tissue paper. I then layered the birds over the tissue and finished the edges with some old black velvet ribbon.


I hung the shade over the bulb with fishing line and some tiny cup hooks in the ceiling. It is very easy to remove, and just four tiny holes to patch, but also very secure. However there was one element I hadn't thought of, the pull chain for the light. I had cut small circle in the tissue on the bottom of the light, perfectly centered, but the chain wasn't exactly in the middle and the first time I tried to turn on the light it tore through the tissue. I tried cutting a bigger opening in the bottom but it looked a bit shoddy.
So I got out the leftover pink tissue paper, cut out a bunch of leaf shapes and made a little insert which I glued to the bottom of the shade. The loose leaf shapes don't get in the way of the chain and look very pretty from below. Overall this took me about two hours of casually glueing while watching oscar nominees, and all the materials I already had on hand so it was a pretty simple fix considering how incredibly happy I am to no longer be met by a glaringly ugly bulb first thing every morning. Also it makes the closet glow pink which is pretty appropriate considering what holiday is fast approaching!

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