I’m making a lamp shade that will rotate from the rising heat of the light bulb. It’ll be constructed to be in a Cottagecore/Goblincore type aesthetic. I plan on making it out of cardstock, some wire to hold its form, and color it with both markers and colored pencils.
1 – I want the lampshade to be big enough that it will fit over a table lamp and not look too small or too large. It needs to be structurally sound enough that it won’t loose its shape but it also needs to let enough light through it to act as a shade, not a complete light block.
2 – It needs to be cylindrical with a pinwheel type top. The pinwheel top will allow the rising heat to turn the lamp and the cylindrical form will make sure that it looks cohesive throughout it’s turn. If it were more cubical or something it would be more obvious that it’s turning and I want it to appear smooth in its turn.
3 – I need it to have a sort of pin or connection point in the center of the pinwheel in order to allow it to turn. If it was screwed down to the lamp it wouldn’t turn, so it needs to sit on top of the lamp where a shade would normally be secured down.
4 – It’s going to be colored in Natural, Earthy colors. Various greens, mostly dark greens, some browns, maybe some hints of reds and oranges. I don’t plan on the lamp shade having any actual leaves or nature found things attached to the shade, but I do want it to seem like it’s made of those things.
5 – I’m also going to punch out some shapes from the lamp shade so that it will project images onto the walls as it turns. These shapes are going to be things such as leaves, small animals, and some small plants such as mushrooms.
Conclusion – I want the shade to at least work as a lamp shade would. If it doesn’t end up being able to turn, that’s okay by me. I’m prioritizing the form and aesthetic of the shade over its intended function.
Constraints:
1 – The main constraint I’m facing is the dynamic portion of the shade. I want it to turn as the heat from the light bulb rises and causes the shade to turn, but there’s no certainty as of right now that it will function the way I intend it to.
I don’t plan on there being many more constraints, but in the interest of listing at least 5, here are some more.
2 – The next constraint I’ll have is how the light will look filtering through the marker and colored pencil coloring of the shade. I’m not sure how aesthetically pleasing it will end up when the light is on from the inside of the lamp as I’ll be coloring it as if the light is off.
3 – I’m not too sure how much my artistic skills can translate to drawing out more naturalistic type designs onto the lampshade, but hopefully what I create will look the way I intend it to look.
4 – I’m not sure how the image/shape cutouts will look or challenge the structure of the lamp shade once cut out. I want them to easily read as the shapes I intended, especially when they’re projected onto my walls, but there’s no current guarantee of that happening. Also I hope that by cutting out some shapes, it won’t compromise the structural integrity of the shade. By this I mean I want it to not distort its shape or end up collapsing in on itself.
5 – The last challenge I’m facing is the pinwheel fan top and making it have an actual fan form/structure, allowing it to turn, even if it doesn’t end up actually turning from the rising light bulb heat. I have a solid idea of how it will fit together in theory, but I’ll have to try to actually make it fit into the top of the lamp shade.
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Hey Juliette,
I really like the dynamic aspect of this, and can’t wait to see how it turns out! You mention that you’re going to have patterns punched into the fabric of the lampshade itself; have you considered having some way to swap out the designs? It would definitely be an additional thing and it’s definitely not something you would need to do, it was just a thought that popped into my head.
Best of luck!
Great work on this post Juliette. It is clear you put a lot of thought into these specifications. I really like the idea behind it and hope that it works. Have you thought about trying to balance the lampshade at a single point on the lamp? This will make it less stable but I believe it will help it turn. It will also be important that you use an older, less efficient lightbulb because LEDs barely give off heat. I can’t wait to see how your project turns out!