Editorial Spotlight: Silhouette Lampshade by Deanna Masselli

Deanna Masselli is the most recent member of the CrafterNews editorial team. We were so pleased when Deanna offered to share one of her own projects with CrafterNews per month! This is the first of many installments from Deanna. Look out for Deanna’s craft spotlights on the first Monday of each month.

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I had wanted to refashion some of my lampshades at home for a while. When I saw The Lampshade Lady’s Guide to Lightening Up Your Life, I was inspired to complete this project.

I remembered seeing a lot of silhouette lampshades, but most were wilderness scenes: bears, dears, and forests. Although those are cool, they’re not particularly my style, so I began to search for something different and found this.

I started by cutting and separating each section or individual piece, like the ladies hanging from above. I’m very particular when cutting images, which I found is best with silhouettes. When the light is on, you see every detail. The more detail, the longer it takes to cut, of course, but it’s worth it in the long run.

Once the images were cut out, I went over each with a black Sharpie to get them as dark as possible. After determining my layout preference, I began gluing. The spray glue gets sticky and dries fairly quickly, but I found I had enough time to reposition if needed. It was really quite simple. The cutting took several hours because I chose images with a ton of detail. Gluing them in place took less than an hour.

It turned out even better than I’d hoped! I’m looking forward to refashioning more shades. My next project may be the antique map design from the book.