Recycled Lamp and Lampshade From Sheet Music Notation

Fix up old lamps with a broken lampshade!

Old paper is perfect for lampshades

It is nice and strong,

It has nice warm off-white / brown colour

The ink is thick and printed on

Just put together some old stuff to make a lamp!

( I collect old stuff anyway)

You will need

# An Old Lamp

# Some Old Paper
I love the musical notation but newspaper or book would do too

# Some way to fix it
This depends how crafty you are. Do it as fancy as you wish.

# A few pieces of celo tape were enough for me

The lamp came to me from a neighbour, but I kept on seeing nice old lamps at charity shops (or thrift shops if you're in US) that I wanted to do the same with.

I don't know what lampshade was on it originally but there was a nice solid frame to hold it still, so my job was quite easy.

My execution was very modest using a little celo tape. It was meant to be temporary but it looked so nice I could never take it apart. - But to be honest it held until now!

Mine is an energy bulb that does not get very hot so no danger with my lamp. You should be careful with your lamp, a paper lampshade is the perfect way to start a fire with a lamp

I measured the diameter of the lampshade and decided how many piece of paper to use and how they should overlap. I was going to find a fourth piece for the gap but then just left it in the end. The gap throws nice light onto the wall.

A. I decided how much I wanted the sheets to overlap, then laid them on the floor that way and taped them together. The overlap will be darker since there is twice as much paper.

B. With tape all around the bottom I could put tape onto the paper without danger of ripping it.

C. I then hung pieces of tape off the bottom sat it on the lamp's frame and fixed the pieces of tape.

There is plenty of room for improvement on how to build the lamp. I've seen cool lamps with folded paper etc. etc.

To me the paper is the critical part.

As I said before, old paper is nice and thick and lets through a nice warm light.
I got my hands on some old music books full of beautiful pages such as this.

What I love most is how the musical notation on the inside appears when the lamp is switched on.

I therefore always chose the title pages and put the Title writing on the outside, and the sheet notation on the inside.

But you can use this effect any way you like!

As you can see on the third page, when there is notation on both sides it gets more messy.

You can do this with any old paper you find,

# be it newspaper

# musical scores

# or any old book.

# Old fairytale books with pictures

# I have old maps those would look great too

~ But the size of paper has to fit the lampshade

~ And hold it against the light to see what it will look like when the lamp is on.

~ Title pages worked best for me, so be aware of that when you buy a whole book.
A pile of mixed papers might have more useful

Not much more to say. I love old paper, old books, old or foreign newspapers.

Here's a great use for it if you have a pile at home yourself and you have the heart to cut out a page

- - -

I mean, take this a step further and you could just use two layers of thinner paper, each with one side printed and the inside one will appear when the light is on.