I have an area between two of my closets that I wanted to turn into a dressing area. There is an overhead light there that looks ok, but to make my vision of a cozy little dressing area/ BoHo Grotto, I needed some mood lighting. My budget was pretty tight after I recently moved into my new place, so I was also looking for something super cheap. Luckily I found this DIY Paper Cup Swirl Pendant Light Shade tutorial on Youtube. I was really knocked out when I saw the end product of this simple, fun DIY, it looked like an ancient Japanese Origami fixture I’ve seen in Architectural Digest. The project begins by simply cutting strips of card stock paper 3.6 cm x 42 cm. Now cut the bottom out of one and hot glue the 2 paper coffee cups together top to top.

Then you mark your cup in 1 cm intervals and start attaching the strips to it.

The results of this project are truly amazing. I made several of these for my kid’s teachers for there teacher’s in-service day and they absolutely loved them. In fact, the art teacher asked me to come back to teach a class tutorial on the project the following week. I couldn’t wait! I refined a kid-friendly version, which was pre-cut strips and using Elmer’s Glue instead of a hot glue gun. The children loved it, I highly recommend this project.

Materials:

• Sketch Illustration Pad
• Craft Knife
• Super Glue
• Glue Gun
• Measuring Tape
• Pencil
• Ruler

DIY Pendant Light Paper Cups