Ever admired a lamp shade made from popsicle sticks in your favorite thrift store? Called "Tramp Lamps" they were all the rage in the late 1960's in the midcentury modern craft wave. Highly prized online, this is a simplified form that emphasizes color and motion. Feel free to experiment with monochrome or different shapes!
🛠 Supplies You’ll Need
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Glue Gun and glue (or Wood Glue or some combination)
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Around 200 popsicle sticks (Various Colors highly recommended!)
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Optional: 4" round E26 lamp base, low wattage LED translucent light bulb.
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Sharp Chisel and hammer or box knife and ruler
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Surface you don't mind sacrificing a little!
👩🎨 Meet the Teacher:
I grew up in the Eastern Washington desert—criss-crossed by rivers, punctuated with nuclear power plants, surrounded by a loving, auto-didactic family full of natural history collectors, gardeners and teachers. I developed a desire to recreate in expansive, pseudo-scientific ways by re-appropriating materials. I reside in Los Angeles in a ramshackle apartment bursting with plants and pieces of esoteric furniture- pigeons and parakeets on my shoulders, humming tiny tunes. missmollymacmacmac.org
👣 The Step by Step Project
Step 1: Collect your Supplies! I happen to have packs and packs of these pre-painted popsicle sticks I'd been dying to use.
Step 2: I drew myself a handy square onto my work surface in order to line up my sticks- the more accurate your squares are the easier they will be to line up in the next step. Next, I began gluing at one corner and laying one stick on top of the other (doing my best to keep each angle at 90 degrees) in numeric order until I came to the 4th stick. This stick I glued to the under side of the end of the 1st stick so that the whole thing was a sort of ouroboros- each stick overlapping the last.
Step 3: Using either hot glue or wood glue start layering the squares slightly askew in a curve. I found doing so around a stack of tape and/or a can of spray paint helped me not tilt too much one way or another.
Step 4: I built a top of just one color- I laid bottom sticks in the 1 and 3 position of my drawn square and then glued the 2 end sticks directly across (no over lap). I equally spaced the rest of the sticks across with slight gaps to match the spacing of the base lamp shade.
Step 5: If using wood glue you will want to weight the entire structure overnight with something that can be on each corner since they are slightly different from each other. Here I used full cans of wood stain which worked perfectly
Step 6: Next I built a base to fit around my light fixtures, slightly wider than the rest of my lamp shade and with a tunnel for the cord. Because I like to over-engineer everything I built a jig from tape and extra popsicle sticks to chisel score my sticks exactly in half, but you could probably use a box knife and a ruler to score and snap the sticks. Either way you don't want to cut all the way through the sticks or you will end up ruing the surface you are cutting on (even if it is a self healing mat!). I also cut spacers to hold the sticks apart around the cord .
Then, starting with a square that fit around my lamp base I built a structure one square at a time until it covered the base of my lamp easily.
Step 7: Lastly, set up your lamps somewhere you can look at them with pride!
‼️Important Notes, Tips or Tricks
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I highly suggest listening to the B52's bop "Summer of Love" while working on this project "orange popsicles and lemonade....".
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Use a small wattage LED light in these- the color gets blown out otherwise, but also anytime you are using non-fire retardant materials you should use the lowest wattage LED you can find.
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Don't try to make the spirals exactly the same- life is too short and beauty is in idiosyncrasy!
💬 Join the Fun & Share!
Did you try this project? Do you have your own custom lamp technique to share? Another song suggestion? Drop a comment below with your tips or show us what you made! We’d love to see your projects!
