I installed a lighting system on the ceiling of my dorm room, and, because I don't like looking at bare bulbs, it needed shades. Originally, I used Japanese-style ball-shaped lanterns, but when my room was abated over the summer of 2004 the frames used to hang the lanterns were destroyed, so I made some new shades. The first set I made were all three identical, made of screen rolled into a cone shape, but I thought they let too much light through, which made them hard to look at when the lights were on.

I decided to make my next set of shades out of paper, in a simple cylindrical shape. First I found the papers: the white paper I got at Paper Source, and the other two I got at Pearl, although I later found the same grey paper at Paper Source. I knew I needed to keep the edges of cylinders stiff, and after walking around Pearl for a while, I found some embroidery hoops. To make the cylinder, I cut the paper to the circumference of the hoop, and taped the edges together. Next, I got some plastic discs that I think are for some sort of embroidery or needle-point, and some small diameter steel rod. I drilled holes through the hoops that just fit the rod, and threaded the rod through small circles I cut out of the plastic sheets. The circles had slits in them, so that the shade could be raised around the light bulb, the wire slid through the slit, and then the plastic ring sat on top of the light fixture. Since the natural wood color didn't match my room's color scheme, I also colored the hoops using some markers that were similar in color to the papers.