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Aug 10, 2020

#memadeshade July Winner

Updated: Oct 26, 2020

As we launch into high summer, the shades keep on coming for our #memadeshade - Instagram competition and the passion for reflecting your style and personality using one of our Needcraft lampshade making kits isn't slowing down! We've had a bumper month this month, with more entries than ever before.


Our monthly #memadeshade winner for July is @shadydaisyco, who has made this amazing monstera shade as a commission for a client and she wins our monthly prize of a £100 voucher to be spent at Dannells. Congratulations Daisy!


Her tropical designs can be seen splashed across her Instagram page, interspersed with fun animal shades and cool cacti. We asked Daisy about her lampshade making journey so far...



Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I am Daisy and I am a full-time social worker, working in the fostering recruitment team in Essex County Council. I live in sunny Suffolk with my partner and my 2 dogs. I love being in the countryside. I have always been interested in older houses, cottages, interior design and crafty things! As a child, I remember always looking through the Argos catalogue at birthdays and Christmas and putting the craft sets on my Santa list! With my line of work, seeing people happy and supporting them is something that resonates throughout my personality, and has definitely transferred into seeing customer’s feedback and pictures of their shades in their homes.


Are you a newbie lampshade maker or have you made up a Needcraft Lampshade making kit before?


I share the love of interior design and home décor with my mum. It is something she definitely instilled in me in my younger years, taking pride in picking out those wall colours or small accessories that make a house a home. When I saw a 45cm Hexagonal lampshade making workshop, at my local antique shop (The Shed, in Sproughton), I booked us both on for her birthday! We had the best time, it was just me and mum, with Louise the trainer who was so lovely. I joked about going home and setting up a business that afternoon and come up with the name on a whim! Over the course of the year, my home started filling up with new lamps, and new shades which I was making from the kits. The more I was doing, the more I was coming up with my own techniques and little tricks to make it work for me.


What do you love about the shade you entered for the #memadeshade competition?


I am an avid indoor plant lover (much to my partner's annoyance!), and I am part of a social media group All About Plants UK. Lots of my shades are based on plant/botanical design fabrics and I started sharing my shades with my plant community. They were all extremely kind, supportive and started to ask if they could buy one- this was my first experience of being commissioned to make a lampshade! The requests continued to come in quite heavily and soon enough everyone was encouraging me to make it into a little venture. I ordered a manufacturers pack (Jamie and Diane were very patient with me!), opened up my Etsy shop and here we are today!! The shade I entered into the competition is by far my best seller and most popular. It is a beautiful print with primarily monstera leaves (everyone in the plant community LOVES a monstera!) and they shine beautifully on the fabric. I cannot get over being July’s winner- I feel so lucky that my shade is so popular and I can make other people happy when they unpackage their shade.


Any plans to make more lampshades?


I most definitely do intend on making more shades, and even if they weren’t being sold through my shop, I would make them up and give them as gifts! I love sourcing all different types of fabrics for people- I was recently given the task to find a fabric to match in with a dark brown stag lamp, with plants as the theme, but to fit in with a Berber style living room- I found the fabric I felt would most fit and the customer was over-joyed with the result. With my line of work, I constantly work with trauma and hearing lots of difficult and challenging things- making my lampshades offers me a therapeutic strategy to get away in my space, to create something beautiful and concentrate on purely that, for that time. It supports me to clear my mind and in doing so, I can then support people more effectively in my work. I recently took a trip back to The Shed, and Louise saw me and straight away asked me how ShadyDaisyCo was getting on- it immediately filled me with a sense of pride and I could feel the tears coming on, just knowing that someone I met a year ago inspired me to do this and was genuinely interested (let alone knew about it!) in how I was doing.





July's most liked shades


July's 'most liked shades' are pick and mix of every style going! From old school rose and Willam Morris prints, to silk painted fabrics, bold modern faces and abstract imagery. We love that you all make anything possible with one of our lampshade making kits!


If you haven't entered before why not give lampshade making a go?


Enter our August #memadeshade competition


Beginner or pro our #memadeshade competition is open to all lampshade makers. Pick from our variety of shade shapes - drum, coolie, oval, square, rectangle and even hexagon - we'd love to see the fabric that your bring to life for your home or creative business.

Here's a reminder of what to do...

  1. Simply take a picture of your proudest lampshade from one of our kits and enter on Instagram following the steps below:

  2. Follow @needcraft if you haven’t already

  3. Post an image of a lampshade you’ve made from an @needcraft lampshade making kit and tag with #memadeshade and the type of kit you used i.e 30cm Drum shade kits, Square kit etc.

  4. And any size and shape can be entered so display those drums shades, exhibit your empires and reveal your rectangles – any lampshade from one of our kits counts!

For full terms and conditions click here.




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