Cardboard lamp with l’École du Carton

Last weekend, I did a workshop with L’École du Carton to learn how to make a cardboard lamp. The workshop was great fun, and I really enjoyed the abstract painting techniques we used to paint the lampshades. I even used some of the techniques I learnt to make a cardboard lampshade for my bedroom at home.

Cardboard lamp workshop at the L’École du Carton

The cardboard lamp workshop was a gift for my birthday from my lovely pacster (My PACS partner). He discovered l’École du Carton for me, which is a place where they teach workshops about making things out of cardboard. They mostly make furniture: shelves, tables, chairs, stools… but the workshop I did was to make a lamp out of cardboard, paper and Indian Inks.

The workshop was 4 hours long, with 1 hour making the base of the lamp, 2 hours painting beautiful abstract designs using different experimental techniques and Indian inks (weirdly, these are called Chinese inks in French!), and finally 1h putting it all together including making the lampshade from the previously painted paper, and wiring up the lamp.

Although I was really excited to make things out of cardboard, my favourite part was the painting. The techniques we used and the textures we created were really interesting. I particularly loved the idea of stamping with the exposed structure of the cardboard. By using the different aspects of the cardboard, there are many different textures that can be created, lines, ridges, and even hexagons.

Here is my finished cardboard lamp. I painted the lampshade using a stamp made of the exposed hexagonal pattern of some cardboard, with some of the hexagonal shapes painted in with orange/yellow.

I have included a few photos here of various stages of the workshop, but I don’t want to go through all of the steps in detail, as this isn’t my own project to share. However, I did go on to make a cardboard lampshade at home using one of my left-over ink designs and some of the things I had learnt, which I am happy to show you below.

My own cardboard lamp design

I was looking for inspiration for a lampshade design for this project, but also for some other projects I have coming up. You can see some of the ideas I have found on my Pinterest board below.

Step 1: Prepare your design

I had made a green painting at l’École du Carton, using Indian inks and water by blowing through a straw to make a splattered looking pattern. I didn’t have quite enough, so I painted some white paper with watercolours to get two shades of green to go with this painting.

Step 2: Measure out your triangles

Use a pencil to measure out the triangle shapes onto the back of your paper. I used 15 triangles in total, 5 patterned, 5 light green, and 5 dark green. My triangles were 14cm wide and 14cm tall. I arranged the triangles tip to toe to maximise the amount of paper used. I then cut out the strip of triangles.

Step 3: Stick the Styrene to the paper

Attach each of your blocks of paper to a piece of styrene. Make sure the patterned or coloured part of the paper is stuck to the plastic. Start at one edge and peel the back off bit by bit to avoid any bubbles or wrinkles.

Step 4: Glue the paper to the cardboard

Glue the back of the paper (with the styrene attached to the front) to the cardboard, making sure to leave the nice side of the cardboard showing.

Step 5: Cut the triangles

Leave the glue to dry. You may want to put something heavy on top of the cardboard while it dries to make sure it stays nice and flat. Once it is dry, you can finish cutting out your triangles.

Step 6: Glue the triangles together to make the lampshade

Glue all the triangles together to make shape. I used 5 triangles for the top part, and then 10 more for the rest of the shade. I recommend making a small prototype to help you see how it all fits together. I did this with white card triangles that I glued together with a glue gun.

Before starting this step, I cut a little bit off the top of my first 5 triangles which will leave a hole for fitting the lampshade later.

Step 7: Tape over the joints

Tape over the joints of your cardboard. I actually did this as I glued the shape together, at least on the inside, because I though it might be difficult to do once the whole shade was complete. This covers up any ugly glue blobs, holds the lampshade together, and frames the design. I used black bias tape on the inside and green Washi tape on the outside.

Step 8: Finishing up

To fit my lampshade, I just attached a small piece of elastic. There was already a hook on the ceiling where I wanted to hand the lamp shade, so I just put the electric fitting through the hole I’d left, and then hooked the elastic to the hook.

And that’s it! I love the geometric style of this lampshade. I even added a small mural to the head of the bed using the Washi tape. This is so cool, as it’s really easy to do, and can be removed without a trace when you are ready to move on to something new – this is yet another great idea I found on Pinterest!