Saturday, January 22, 2011

Easy, Modern Fabric Night Light

I got sidetracked, yet again, with another little project! Today I decorated a simple night light with fabric for the baby's room! I say sidetracked because it wasn't on my list of goals for 2011 but I'll be doing this from time to time or A LOT of the time. I have covered a lamp shade in the past and LOVED how that worked out so I thought this would be fun too. I'll be sharing the lamp shade project sometime too. I've got more of these to do!

A while back I replaced most of the night lights in the house with the new LED ones so we wouldn't have to change out light bulbs as often, and just like with the Christmas LED lights, I'm just not terribly crazy about them. We've gotten used to the "outer space" kind of glow of the LED night lights, but they aren't very warm and for a baby's room, it is hard to see what you're doing in the middle of the night.


On to the night light and I warn you... there are lots of pictures! 

I picked up a plain white night light at AC Moore last weekend. They're pretty cheap, especially with a coupon. As for the fabric, I already had the fabric! It's dark brown with light blue Polka Dots! I bought it on sale a while back thinking I could use it as curtains in the baby's room when he's a little older. The walls are a bright green so this fabric should be a good contrast!



I played around with the placement of the fabric before doing anything. I didn't want the dots to line up perfectly; instead I wanted it to be casual, yet feel symmetrical as a whole.

After deciding the placement of the fabric, I flipped the shade and fabric over. Starting from left to right of the shade, I traced it, marking the fabric and rolling the shade as I went.
 
I then cut the shape out of the fabric leaving about a half inch border around my pencil marks.


I cut two slits under the metal prongs.

I stepped outside to spray the lamp shade with the spray adhesive below
 
Once the spray was on, I began sticking the fabric onto the shade and rubbed it, smoothing out any wrinkles or bubbles. The adhesive is tacky and if you find you need more, it's okay to spray on more.

Once I smoothed all the bumps and bubbles, I cut the edges a little more, so I had about a quarter inch edge. You may want to make sure you have a little more than that to wrap your edges though.

Lastly, I wrapped the edges and cut slits in all four corners so they would fold and stick to the shade more easily.

 
I'm happy with the results! It's a nice, clean looking night light that serves its purpose well! It is a big safety factor, not to mention it was a cheap and easy little addition to the room!

Oh yes, I washed the fabric before I used it for this project!