My daughter’s room used to be deep purple and hot pink, which as a five year old, she adored! Now as a nine year old, we are in process of purging anything pink and redoing her room in shade of purple, orange, and mint green. (We absolutely fell in love with this Moxie fabric line by Erin McMorris and we ran with it as our inspiration! Isn’t it perfect for a tween girls bedroom?)
During this process, we had to replace her lamp shade, which was once one of her prized posessions. It was a hot pink sateen shade with a hot pink feather boa trim. It was perfect – but it was pink. She decided to replace it with this white sparkle lampshade from Target, which is adorable and glittery, but I wanted to add a little special touch. I found an orange vinyl scrap from Expressions Vinyl in my stash and decided to make a silhouette to go inside the shade. Why inside and not outside? Because this way, you only see the special night time message when her lamp goes on at night! When the lamp is off, you can’t see the decal. Pretty cool, right?
I created my cut out in the Cricut Design Space, and it was really easy to make. I used a speech bubble to coordinate with the fabric, a star, and the words “sweet dreams” in the font Xiomara. If you want to create the project exactly like I did, you can visit this link (Sweet Dreams Vinyl Silhouette Lampshade) to use Cricut’s Make It Now service and all you have to do is slip your vinyl into the machine and press Go.
One important thing to remember when you’re cutting your vinyl is to select “Mirror Image” on your cut preview screen. Usually you only select this option for iron on, but because we want the sticky side to stick to the inside of the lampshade, we want it to reverse. That way, when the light shines through, the words are the right way.
Weed out the pieces you don’t need using a hook, and place transfer paper on top of the decal. This will help you line up your vinyl inside the lampshade, which gets a little tricky sometimes, since you can’t really lay out the lampshade flat. My advice for positioning the vinyl is to barely stick the tip of one side and try to look from the outside of the lampshade to see your alignment. Adjust if necessary. It’s not hard, just a little tricky. It will still only take a minute or so – and if you are in serious doubt about your ability to line it up straight, place it crooked on purpose – this would look just as cute positioned on an angle.
I just love the finished product, and it adds such a custom touch for a five minute project – aren’t those the best?! If you need vinyl, make sure you check out Expressions Vinyl, they have the largest selection of colors and sizes at the best prices. They also sell a bag of vinyl scraps which would be perfect for little projects like this – but I hear they sell out super quick! I always keep every little piece of leftover vinyl – you never know when it could come in handy (I’ve decorated notebooks, christmas ornaments, gift tags, soap bottles, and more, all with the scraps that would normally be discarded!)
Oh, and in case you missed my post on the best craft supplies and where to score deals – you can sign up for the Expressions Vinyl newsletter and it is always full of deals and coupons to save you money.
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