DIY Removable Lampshade Accessory

As promised, here is my little secret for making removable décor for your lampshade. What has my life come to, that the most exciting thing I’ve done recently is come up with a way to add and remove accessories to/from my lampshades? Don’t answer. I’ll just ponder that one alone for a few minutes, maybe over a bowl of ice cream. This feels petty. But it’s pretty. Pretty makes petty a little better, right?

On Friday, I shared my Christmas vignette. Here is the vignette sans-lampshade spice.

The lampshade matches the burlap runner too closely, and it looks sorta blah when everything else has layers and pattern and texture and glitz and all. I thought it needed a little of the Christmas-y red to tie it in to the rest of the vignette. I wanted to add some felt flowers, but couldn’t think up a way to attach them that wouldn’t ruin the lampshade if I wanted to remove them after Christmas—hot glue would be a disaster when I want to take the flowers off, and even something less permanent like pins or heavy duty tape might damage the fabric shade. Then, inspiration. And a purposeful lack of google/Pinterest searching, because I’d like to just claim this idea for once without having google/Pinterest prove yet again that I never have any original thoughts.

The answer: magnets.

I made two little flowers out of felt (tutorials abound on the interwebs for felt flowers, so I won’t contribute a new one here) and gathered up 4 magnets that have been sitting in my craft room for ages. They aren’t anything special or super powerful—just part of a big package of cheap magnets I got from the craft section at Walmart months and months ago.

Just cut a small felt circle to fit the back of your flower, and hot glue it on.

Then glue one of the magnets onto that circle.

And shazam! You’ve got yourself some easily-removable, regret-free, no-lampshades-were-harmed-in-the-making-of-this-Christmas-vignette lampshade spice. When you want to get rid of them or switch them our for something different, they’ll come right off with no damage whatsoever to your shade, and you can make them in various colors to fit your ever-changing décor or different seasons/holidays. Just use one of the magnets inside the lampshade, and place the flower on the outside. They’ll hold together and should stay in place just fine.

Don’t you think they add a little something to the look? I think they make the lamp look like it belongs in that vignette, and not like it’s just an extra piece just floating around in there. Sitting awkwardly outside the group, trying to join the conversation. Middle school flashbacks, anyone?