This week Brodie brings you an up-cycled home DIY project using up any scrap pieces you might have left over from your SMP craft kits or you can use felt or craft foam that you might have at home!!
I have been saving all of my scraps of paper and craft foam, no matter how small, from every SMP activity I’ve made over the last few weeks now because I knew they would come in handy.
While I was putting the kids to sleep the other night, inspiration struck! They have had a cheap and cheerful light shade in their bedroom since we moved into this house and, while I try to buy items for our house that I know we will love and keep for a long time, this was admittedly a hurried purchase when we were in the midst of moving houses and I have never really liked this light shade for their room. But, seeing as how we are always looking for ways to reduce our waste in this household, I decided to give this light shade a bit of a revamp instead of replacing it and have it reflect my children’s tastes and personalities a bit more.
My daughter has been telling us for years about how her bed turns into a spaceship at night and she travels into space to visit her alien friends (just waiting for the day she decides to take her little brother with her and the aliens can settle him in the night for us). This gave me the inspiration to go with a fun and friendly space theme!
First I gave the shade a quick spray with some silver spray paint we had left over from a Christmas craft project. While I waited for the paint to dry, I went over all my left-over pieces of foam sheeting. From the larger pieces, I traced the bottom of a coffee cup to cut out some planet shapes.
From the remaining larger pieces I cut out a rocket, UFO and alien shapes. You’ll notice the aliens are all inspired by the cute characters and shapes featured on our SMP craft kit packaging. All the really small scraps of foam were used to decorate the planets, spaceships and became floating space junk to fill in any empty spots.
I simply added a few googly eyes to the aliens to bring them to life and used up the last of my pom pom stash to create fluffy little meteors. I used glue to stick all the pieces together and then used the hot glue gun to stick them on to the lamp shade.
The result is a truly spectacular lampshade that blew my kids minds!!!
The best part is I didn’t buy a single thing and used up materials that otherwise would have gone to waste AND impressed my kids – not an easy feat.
If you give this DIY project a go we would love to see your version – tag us @seemakeplay so we can find your amazing creations!
