Night & Day Coupage: Green Light, Go!

My new office at work is a typical grey cube. Though decent in size, the lighting is not the best. There are the usual harsh, overhead fluorescents, but I needed a little ambience/task lighting — something with flair and pizzazz. So, I thought of a lamp I already have at home, which I recently moved to the basement because I wasn't using it ...

Ordinary faded lampshade

This is a decent modern desk lamp I purchased at Urban Outfitters a number of years ago. The shade is actually very faded, so I thought it would be the perfect candidate to undergo a decoupage treatment.

I browsed through my cumbersome yet handy vintage wallpaper book ...

The source of many of my collage/decoupage projects

And discovered an excellent green plaid pattern called Clansman. 

I then cut out pieces and laid them on the floor to create a design ...

Layout development

Because the pattern is gridded, it wasn't too difficult to create a design I liked. I first tried taping pieces onto the shade with masking tape to see if the design would fit properly. This was particularly difficult because I'd never worked with a cylindrical shape before. Once I got the four largest diamond-shaped pieces to fit, the rest of the pieces were relatively easy to place. Using acrylic gloss medium, I attached all of the wallpaper pieces to the shade, and voilá!

Shade with completed design applied

For the top and bottom edges, I was trying to find images of pie crusts to suggest key lime pie because of the light green colors in the paper, but once I cut them out, they looked like small intestines. NOT the look I was going for. Instead, I found this image online of a quiche, and I cut this out in the shape of thin pie crusts...

Real men decoupage with quiche

This photo shows another part of the design...

For the final touches, I cut out four circles of brown leather from one of my bags of leftover fabrics, using a nickel to get the size I wanted. I used silver pearl head pins to attach them to the lampshade. It's difficult to see from the photo, but parts of the wallpaper are metallic silver, so the silver pearl head pins complement the paper — and the lamp base — beautifully.

Night coupaged — ooh

Night coupaged — la la!