Yarn Ombre Lampshade Tutorial

By Mandi • 10/19/2011

Ombre is HOT right now. I have been in love with it for a few months but haven’t had a project to use it on yet. This lampshade was the perfect project. And it is SUCH an easy, high impact DIY.

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First things first. Get your lampshade and your yarn!

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This is what the lamp looked like when we bought it from Restore for $49.00

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Originally I wrapped the shade differently and it just didn’t look good. It looked striped and not awesome. So I started over with a change of plans.

You want to start by putting a little hot glue about 2” above the base of your shade. Start wrapping round and round and round.

To make it so that the yarn lines up gently push it down with your finger tips. When you get to the point that you are ready to incorporate your second color wrap it very loosely a few times around leaving large gaps.

Place your second color on with a little bit of hot glue. And don’t judge the fact that there is hot glue the entire way up the shade….

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And here is the secret tip of the day…. Put your first color of yarn inside the shade so that you can wrap the second one without it getting tangled. You will wrap over the first color of yarn to hide it.

Wrap your second color in-between the first color. Then with your finger tips push them down so that they are all together tightly.

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After you rotate the colors every other one for a few rows wrap the second color around a few times and then incorporate another row or 2 with the first color. (you can see in the below picture where I wrapped over the first color of yarn and then brought it back out)

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When you are finished with the first color cut your yarn and glue the end in place. Then start wrapping the second color exclusively.

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Repeat the blending technique with your third color. Remember to keep the yarn color you aren’t using inside your shade!

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When you have finished wrapping the third color and have glued the end in place flip your shade over to finish the first color.

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And then you are done! I am so proud of you!

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Hailee’s husband Mark is an electrician and totally installed this light to a switch.

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The base of the lamp was sprayed with Krylon Dual in White Gloss. Dual is a perfect product to use for a project like this.

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You can see the entire room reveal here.

Love Your Guts[5]

37 thoughts on “Yarn Ombre Lampshade Tutorial”

  4. i love it SO MUCH! I usually try to take something that you or someone has done and put my own twist on it, but i love this so much that I might just have to do it exactly, but maybe another color although I LOVE these colors! LOVE! you are amazing

    Reply

  8. Love it ! but I have just one question. Why did you start 2 inches from the base and then go back to finish. Why not just start at the base?

    Reply

  9. I love your guts, but please for the love of all that is good and holy, stop calling stripes “ombre”. Ombre is a gradation from one color to another, so gradual that you cannot pick out a single color band. This is not ombre. This is stripes. Y’all are driving me bananas with all these striped fake-ombre things.

    Reply

  10. I didn’t even realize there were three different colors of yarn when I first saw this! I thought you just wrapped two colors around a white shade! I love the tutorial, and I have the same question as Anessa, “Why did you start two inches from the base, and then go back and finish?”

    Reply

  13. Mandi:

    I ABSOLUTELY LOVE this project!

    Thank you for a great tutorial on this awesome project. I am always looking for new ways to spice up newly purchased shades or thrift store finds.

    I can’t wait to try this out. What an absolutely creative girl you are : )

    Cori

    Reply

  22. I am looking for picture frames…like the one with the skeleton and that beautiful yellow one on your wall…Do you know where I could find some?

    Reply

  25. Just saw you do this on Nate today 🙂 I’ve been looking for something to do with my plain shades in my living room. I’m so excited to try this out!

    Reply

  28. I can’t even imagine how long that must have taken but the result is really great! Love the colour combination on the lampshade

    Reply

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