SHADE-CRAFT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 905, 24 February 1930, Page 5

SHADE-CRAFT

Lamp Decorations Made at Home USE OF MATCH STICKS There are many ways of decorating lampshades, quite within the capabilities of all and one of the most attractive of these is by means of painted match sticks. Any plain parchment shade that is not curved in any way may be used as it is not possible to stick the matches to a curved surface. Take a box of matches and cut the heads off with a sharp knife or a razor blade. Choose a colour scheme and paint the match sticks accordingly in either water colours, oils, or colour inks. Make sure the colours are strong- enough to be effective, applying two or more coats of paint if necessary, and then leave to dry. Lightly draw the pattern on the parchment. and then glue on the match sticks. When these are firmly stuck, paint in portions of the pattern in the same medium as used for the match sticks. This will help the design to be considerably more effective. Finally paint over the whole shade with a coat of varnish and leave to dry. Another variation of the match stick decoration is the use of small wooden buttons. These are painted in the same way as the matches and the little holes are filled in with black beads; they make charming little berries if coloured in red. Glue them in little groups on the parchment and

when quite dry paint in some leaves. If preferred, the buttons can form the centres of flowers and petals can be painted around them. Festoons of

grapes would also look effective, but i for these the buttons should be of j different sizes, the large ones being used near the leaves and the tiny ones near the end of the bunches. Raffia Trimming Raffia is another rather unusual material for decorating lamp-shades. Punch holes top and bottom of the shad© and over-sew with coloured or plain raffia. Then take a long strand of double raffia and make a network pattern from top to bottom, knotting it at regular intervals. The effect should j be something like the outer covering of j a ginger jar. Of course, many other patterns can be woven with the raffia, according to the worker's taste and ability, but do not forget in this case to varnish the shade before starting to work with the .raffia. In some cases when the surroundings are rather decorative, a plainer shade is often desirable, and for this purpose here is a simple but very effective design. Draw a circle on parchment of the size the bottom of the shade is to be and cut out about one quarter of this, as if cutting a large slice of cake. Now stick £he cut edges firmly together, slightly overlapping them. Your shade should look something like a mushroom with a point oh top. Punch holes round the bottom and then varnish. Stick a piece of gold ribbon over the jointed edges and over-sew the ribbon through the holes at the bottom.