How to DIY a boob light into a drum shade

This is a tutorial on how I turned the ugly builder-grade boob light in my guest room into something a little more pleasant to look at with a regular lamp shade from Home Goods.

Once I took the shade off my existing boob light I could see that it had a large nipple that ran down from the ceiling and into the shade. This is what lets you screw the shade onto the fixture.

I picked up this lampshade at Home Goods for $6 in the clearance section. It was all dented and busted up but I didn't care because I was planning to recover it anyway. My only requirements for it were size - I wanted something substantial enough for the room - and a spider top. See how the hardware criss-crosses at the top of the shade and not down inside? That's a spider shade.

Because I'm a hoarder of craft supplies, I already had everything else on hand.

I was originally going to use some grosgrain ribbon to finish the shade but I was able to remove the binding at the top and bottom of the original shade in one large piece. They were in such great condition that I decided to just reuse them to finish the shade after I recovered it.

This really couldn't be any easier. Follow Janell's tutorial which is much better than mine. Wrap your fabric around the shade, making adjustments as you go. Once you're happy with the placement, start gluing.

I was originally going to use a fan brush to brush on some fabric glue but I got really impatient with how slow that was going so I just dabbed the glue right on the shade at various intervals. Just use a very light hand. A little goes a long way and if you glob it on there, it will show through your fabric.

Add the binding piece back on with more fabric glue.

Trim away the excess fabric on the inside of your shade. This is actually an important step because you'll be able to see up into your shade once it's hung. So be diligent about getting as close to the edge as possible.

So now you've got a finished shade, but you have to get it up on the ceiling. The best way I found to do this was to get some couplers and assorted brass nipples from Lowes. You'll use these to extend the length of the existing nipple on your boob ceiling light. (this post is so definitely getting picked up by porn spammers huh?)

Couplers

Extenders

First I added the coupler.

Then I screwed a nipple extension into the coupler (sorry, no pics of this step). Then I slid the whole shade on.

Ideally I'd be able to stop here and just throw out the glass shade that came with the boob light. The problem was that without it, the shade was hanging pretty low, leaving me with an unsightly gap between the ceiling and the shade.

So I had to compromise and screw the entire glass shade back on. It is essentially sandwiching the lampshade against the ceiling and eliminating the gap.

Not ideal because you can still see it from below but it solved the problem.

By no means is this is permanent fix but for $6 out of pocket for the lampshade, it's definitely one I can live with for a bit!