Make a pressed flower lampshade - Part 1

Make a Pressed Flower Lampshade - Part 1: Selecting Your Pressed Flowers

There are lots of imaginative ways to use your pressed flowers, and in this lesson, you will learn how to apply them to a lampshade.

Selecting Flowers

• As the flowers will be directly exposed to a bright light source in close range, they will be even more prone to fading. When selecting flowers to use, go for stems that have an interesting silhouette and structure, rather than ones that have eye-catching colour, as this is what will prevail once the colour fades.
• You'll be applying the flowers onto a curved surface, so opt for stems that still have a little flexibility and give to them.

Good stems to use:

Pansy - very flexible and easy to work with

Butterfly Ranunculus - pretty iridescent petals

Virginia Creeper - just use the leaves

Dicentra - beautiful structure and flexible

Avoid:

• Anything with a rigid woody stem, such as Clematis
• Straight stems, they won't work very well on a curved surface

You Will Need:

• A selection of pressed flowers
• For a parchment lampshade, we like to use ones from Pooky
• Masking tape
• Scissors or scalpel
• Tweezers

Arranging Your Composition

Keep it simple and don't overcomplicate it, as this can start to look too twee and a bit old-fashioned. We would recommend sticking to one species of flower.

Step 1: Prepare small strips of masking tape using scissors or a scalpel. Stick them onto your hand or clothing - this removes some of the tacks and also means they are easy to grab when you need them.

Step 2: Take your lampshade and your first stem, and play around with different orientations and placements. Try not to bend or manipulate the stem too much - celebrate its natural shape and allow your composition to follow its movement.

Step 3: When you have found a pleasing placement, use strips of masking tape to keep it in position. Be careful not to stick tape to the petals, as this could tear them.

Step 4: Continue adding subsequent stems and experimenting with the positioning - try to create a fluid arrangement that looks attractive all the way around. Tape stems in place as you go, you can always adjust and move them as you work your way around.

Step 5: You can fill any blank spaces with single leaves or individual flowers you have pressed separately. Similarly, if you find a leaf to be too big you can remove it and replace it with a smaller one.

Step 6: Once you are happy with the positioning, trim any stems that trail off the lampshade. For a neat finish, it's nice for them to sit within the lampshade trim.