Throwin' shade; (and Mod Pdge Fabric)

If only...I wish this was a scandalous blog post where I call out some unnamed hater and drop the mic on some fool who did me wrong.
This post isn't even about sunglasses...it's about lamp shades.

Woo hoo, look at those beauties...I bet I'm totally capturing readers with this image, drawing you in with a great pair of boring old lamp shades.
Even though I have a huge backlog of sewing projects to show you, I feel like it's been a while since I did a non-clothing DIY post. Here's how I did something to some shades. I'll throw in some pictures of lamps, too!
So, those are two small fabric lamp dealies. They're boring and beige but they were $1 each and just the right size for some $2 lamps I recently brought home.

Just a couple of fancy ceramic pillars painted to resemble french vanilla ice cream with the little black specks. How can I make them more appealing? With fancy shades. Or regular shades that I would fancy up. When I got this idea in my head, I impulsively got up and went to Savers to look at fabric remnants and pillow shades. I had a plan.

A plan that included Mod Podge for Fabric that I had to acquire. (I added that brand name to the title because maybe this post will come up on Google searches.) So, with my blue-labeled decoupage medium and two floral place mats --that's what I found at Savers-- I was down to do this thing. I cranked on the air conditioner and  for ready to attach some things to things.
That's pretty much my way of describing most of my projects. I take two or more items/materials and some kind of adhesive then join them together: attach things to things.

The place mats were very 60s-70s floral with a barkcloth feel. There's a hastily snapped picture of one of the place mats before I tore into it with some new fabric-only scissors.

...and here it is after.

What did you think I was going to do? Take measurements, mark where to cut, do geometry, and then cover the shade with properly sized fabric? That's what a good crafter would do. I decided to cut a bunch of the flowers and leaves from the mat in various sizes. I was going to do this collage style.
After a shit-ton of cutting, I grabbed a paint brush and started painting the backs of my cut-outs with Mod Podge, paying no mind to the fraying around the edges. Because screw it. I let my hard work dry overnight before adding the top layer of Podge to my masterpieces. Eventually, I had these:

Closer look?

High five me because I created these and these are great. The flowers are kinda 3-D, kinda trompe l'eoil (prob spelled that wrong), and maybe a little shabby. Buy my lamps.

available on Etsy

High on my own personal satisfaction, I overestimated my technique and hauled one of these babies out of hiding:

Just the shades, not the granny lamps. Those are two perfectly good, huge, drum shaped lamp shades that also happened to be all dingy and ugly from their years. I got a fix for that.

The picture doesn't do it justice, but it's a glorious large pillow sham featuring botanical-looking wildflowers in beautiful colors! I repeated the above process...

Nope. That's a no for me, hard pass, do not want. I guess from a distance, it's doable but it just reminds me too much of a poster that has been plastered with images cut from magazines and layered with Elmers.
But, you should see the lamp I planned on pairing it with:

Nice find, right? It's all swirly and 70s colored. Mint condish, lamp lovers...for sale on Etsy.
I've got a whole lamp party over here. Boatloads of lighting! Stick around and I'll do a whole post of 'em, nothing but pictures of lamps.

Meh.