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Step 16Making a shade - paper part
Spots before your eyes:
Although you will rejoice in the majesty of this glorious contraption, you will probably also be stumbling around your flat crashing into stuff and screaming "my eyes!!" because the little halogen bulbs are awful bright and leave numerous spots in your vision.
You'll want a shade, for a few reasons. There's the spots-in-eyes problem described above, but there is also an interiors question - majestic though it is, not everybody wants a large cardboard machine in the corner of their room, so it needs disguised. Personally I'd love to have it naked, or have the shade on the inside of the framework somehow, but I decided a presentable shade that would help fulfill part 3 of the brief (see step 1) was essential.
Now there's lot's of ways to make a shade, I've made one from lycra (spandex) simply glued and stretched over the frame, which look rather neat, but my favourite is the pleated paper shade. This was the shade on my first lamp, and it complements the whole design very nicely. I'll show you how to make the shade here, and show some pictures on the last page of other versions of the lamp I've done, for those seeking further inspiration.
The plan:
The shade is made of four long panels of 45g/m2 layout paper, one for each side of the lamp. This is the standard paper used in design. It's good for this application because it it thin enough to let plenty of light through, but not transparent like tracing paper (which was my first natural choice), which ended up just looking dull and grey when it was turned off.
Layout paper is also light, and reasonably cheap. You may already have some in fact, if you are into designing stuff. If not, I recommend it!
The panels of layout paper are simply folded, concertina style, into inch-long pleats, and all four sides of the shade are joined into one long rectangular tube by inserting strips of a soft, crease-tolerant paper in the corner joints. I used rice paper of the sort used for calligraphy. I actually used a double-layer here, because it was so thin.
I haven't done any plans or anything for the paper part of this shade, because there's nothing to it really. I used A2-sized pieces of paper for the long sides, and A3-sized pieces for the short sides. After doing all the folding and sticking them together, I trimmed the long pieces so they were 390mm long, and the short pieces so they were 240mm long (pic).
The bottom is finished with a cardboard trim that slots into the base, the top has a handle to keep grubby fingers of the paper, and inside are a number of spars that help support the shade.
Folding:
I laid a few sheets together, and put in a series of parallel creases using a straight edge and a template laid behind with a bunch of lines drawn on it. This isn't fun. I won't lie. But it'll be over with soon. Each side has 44 peaks in it, that is there's 88 folds in total. The long ones had a few more because of the how many sheets happened to fit, but that'll be trimmed. The exact number of folds is irrelevant, as is the size of the folds really. When fully stretched out, it'll be around 210cm long, but there needs to be a fair bit of slack in it so it doesn't pull on the lamp too much.
Sticking together:
Now, this bit really is ludicrous. I'll make no bones about this, and there's a good reason why I have wracked my brains to come up with alternative ways of making the shade. But I'm going to present the steps as if I had no problem executing them. So I'll buy you a pan-galactic gargle-blaster at Milliways when you've finished.
It isn't really impossible, just takes a lot of space, a bit like putting on a tissue-paper duvet cover. If you can imagine that. Two pairs of hands is helpful, and a gentle touch is good too.
Use the glue sparingly since it weakens the paper a lot until it's dry. You can use an iron to help it dry if you need to. If you have a hard floor (laminate would be ideal) you might find it easier, but be careful not to leave the glue drying without moving it for too long, or you may well end up with it glued to the floor. I used some old shower curtain material to protect the carpet (refugee from a previous shade making exercise) and a row of books to keep press the joint flat initially.
I made up two giant sheets consisting of a rice paper insert, a wide panel, another rice paper insert, then a narrow panel. Then lay the panels on top of each other (correct way round since you can't turn it inside out afterwards), and then bend the strips of rice paper that are sticking out opposite sides and apply the final two lines of glue. After this, you should have a nominally rectangular tube of paper about seven foot long: You deserve a medal, seriously.
I'm really looking forward to making a shade like this from some kind of woven fabric that I can man handle a bit, and that folds less aggressively. I hope to be doing just that in a future Instructable.
Re-folding:
It's a good idea to leave this to dry for a good couple of hours before you start yanking it all over to try and get it back into it's folded form. Use your spare pair of hands, or a lot of long sticks and a gentle touch to get the paper tube tented, into a rough rectangle form, and use something to keep it propped that way. Remake the first few pleats on each side of the shade, holding each end with clothes pegs as you go. This first bit is the hardest. Try your best to keep the whole thing square - once its been folded slant (as this one was, since it was leaning against the front of the sofa for stability), it's really hard to get it square again. You'll find the corners don't fold neatly. Don't even try, just crush them.
The first time I did this I hung the shade from two ropes strung from opposite sides of the room, with a kind of cardboard "carriage" on it to protect the shade from the ropes. The result was better than this floor-borne one, but I've been forbidden from stringing up ropes around the house anymore.
There's no shortcuts to make here, just keep folding and pegging, folding and pegging until you're done. You might be worried that the shade ends up looking too creased and battered. Well don't worry, that's character.
Now, if the lamp is encased in delicate paper, you need a handle to push it up and down with, and a base so the bottom doesn't flap all over the place. No-one likes a flappy bottom, so onto the final step.
Although you will rejoice in the majesty of this glorious contraption, you will probably also be stumbling around your flat crashing into stuff and screaming "my eyes!!" because the little halogen bulbs are awful bright and leave numerous spots in your vision.
You'll want a shade, for a few reasons. There's the spots-in-eyes problem described above, but there is also an interiors question - majestic though it is, not everybody wants a large cardboard machine in the corner of their room, so it needs disguised. Personally I'd love to have it naked, or have the shade on the inside of the framework somehow, but I decided a presentable shade that would help fulfill part 3 of the brief (see step 1) was essential.
Now there's lot's of ways to make a shade, I've made one from lycra (spandex) simply glued and stretched over the frame, which look rather neat, but my favourite is the pleated paper shade. This was the shade on my first lamp, and it complements the whole design very nicely. I'll show you how to make the shade here, and show some pictures on the last page of other versions of the lamp I've done, for those seeking further inspiration.
The plan:
The shade is made of four long panels of 45g/m2 layout paper, one for each side of the lamp. This is the standard paper used in design. It's good for this application because it it thin enough to let plenty of light through, but not transparent like tracing paper (which was my first natural choice), which ended up just looking dull and grey when it was turned off.
Layout paper is also light, and reasonably cheap. You may already have some in fact, if you are into designing stuff. If not, I recommend it!
The panels of layout paper are simply folded, concertina style, into inch-long pleats, and all four sides of the shade are joined into one long rectangular tube by inserting strips of a soft, crease-tolerant paper in the corner joints. I used rice paper of the sort used for calligraphy. I actually used a double-layer here, because it was so thin.
I haven't done any plans or anything for the paper part of this shade, because there's nothing to it really. I used A2-sized pieces of paper for the long sides, and A3-sized pieces for the short sides. After doing all the folding and sticking them together, I trimmed the long pieces so they were 390mm long, and the short pieces so they were 240mm long (pic).
The bottom is finished with a cardboard trim that slots into the base, the top has a handle to keep grubby fingers of the paper, and inside are a number of spars that help support the shade.
Folding:
I laid a few sheets together, and put in a series of parallel creases using a straight edge and a template laid behind with a bunch of lines drawn on it. This isn't fun. I won't lie. But it'll be over with soon. Each side has 44 peaks in it, that is there's 88 folds in total. The long ones had a few more because of the how many sheets happened to fit, but that'll be trimmed. The exact number of folds is irrelevant, as is the size of the folds really. When fully stretched out, it'll be around 210cm long, but there needs to be a fair bit of slack in it so it doesn't pull on the lamp too much.
Sticking together:
Now, this bit really is ludicrous. I'll make no bones about this, and there's a good reason why I have wracked my brains to come up with alternative ways of making the shade. But I'm going to present the steps as if I had no problem executing them. So I'll buy you a pan-galactic gargle-blaster at Milliways when you've finished.
It isn't really impossible, just takes a lot of space, a bit like putting on a tissue-paper duvet cover. If you can imagine that. Two pairs of hands is helpful, and a gentle touch is good too.
Use the glue sparingly since it weakens the paper a lot until it's dry. You can use an iron to help it dry if you need to. If you have a hard floor (laminate would be ideal) you might find it easier, but be careful not to leave the glue drying without moving it for too long, or you may well end up with it glued to the floor. I used some old shower curtain material to protect the carpet (refugee from a previous shade making exercise) and a row of books to keep press the joint flat initially.
I made up two giant sheets consisting of a rice paper insert, a wide panel, another rice paper insert, then a narrow panel. Then lay the panels on top of each other (correct way round since you can't turn it inside out afterwards), and then bend the strips of rice paper that are sticking out opposite sides and apply the final two lines of glue. After this, you should have a nominally rectangular tube of paper about seven foot long: You deserve a medal, seriously.
I'm really looking forward to making a shade like this from some kind of woven fabric that I can man handle a bit, and that folds less aggressively. I hope to be doing just that in a future Instructable.
Re-folding:
It's a good idea to leave this to dry for a good couple of hours before you start yanking it all over to try and get it back into it's folded form. Use your spare pair of hands, or a lot of long sticks and a gentle touch to get the paper tube tented, into a rough rectangle form, and use something to keep it propped that way. Remake the first few pleats on each side of the shade, holding each end with clothes pegs as you go. This first bit is the hardest. Try your best to keep the whole thing square - once its been folded slant (as this one was, since it was leaning against the front of the sofa for stability), it's really hard to get it square again. You'll find the corners don't fold neatly. Don't even try, just crush them.
The first time I did this I hung the shade from two ropes strung from opposite sides of the room, with a kind of cardboard "carriage" on it to protect the shade from the ropes. The result was better than this floor-borne one, but I've been forbidden from stringing up ropes around the house anymore.
There's no shortcuts to make here, just keep folding and pegging, folding and pegging until you're done. You might be worried that the shade ends up looking too creased and battered. Well don't worry, that's character.
Now, if the lamp is encased in delicate paper, you need a handle to push it up and down with, and a base so the bottom doesn't flap all over the place. No-one likes a flappy bottom, so onto the final step.
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