1. Find an inflatable ball, such as a beach ball, a little smaller than you want the lampshade to be.
2. Pour a 10-ounce bottle of craft glue into a bowl. I used Mod Podge, but any brand that dries with a clear, matte finish will work.
3. Dilute with a quarter cup of water.
4. Cut twine into 4-foot lengths and swirl them around in the glue until they are fully coated. I used hemp and fluorescent-yellow mason twine from Home Depot.
5. Wrap the twine around the inflated ball, overlapping the different strands. Leave a 3-inch-diameter hole over the inflation valve of the ball. You'll use that to pull the ball out when the glue is dry. Also, that's where you'll hang your lightbulb.
6. Let dry overnight.
7. Deflate the ball and remove it from the lampshade. You'll have to do a bit of gentle prying to disengage it from the glued strings.
8. Affix the lampshade to a plug-in or hard-wired pendant light fixture, which you can find online or at Ikea. I cut a small hole in a yogurt container lid to suspend my string ball around a lightbulb, but you might find a more elegant way to do this using wire or an aluminum sheet.
This story appears in the September 2015 issue of Popular Mechanics.
