

After posting amazing upcycled cardboard design on my blog upcycleDZINE, I wanted to give it a go myself. Two weeks ago I showed you my first experiment made out of I had saved from old boxes. Since I had sketches laying around for several lampshade designs, I needed to find a way to get hold of some discarded cardboard. After some searching and telephone calls I finally found a great source. One of our local bicycle shops gets new bikes delivered every week in big cardboard boxes. There are two different types. One is sort of a slim packaging that fits around the sides of the bicycle and another one is a regular box, but very big. The slim version is made out of 4 mm thick cardboard and the box is made out of a very sturdy 7 mm cardboard and both have prints on the outside that can give a unique touch to the final product.

Robust upcycled cardboard

Last week I made a new upcycle design lampshade called ‘BoxHat‘, width 40 and height 27 cm, using that 7 mm cardboard. Just like I did with my lampshade BoxCrown I designed it with the idea to make a DIY version, which should be easy to ship to the customer. People would be able to put all the parts together and assemble their lampshade.







I made this prototype to see how things would turn out. Creating a good template for this lamp showed me that I do have to look for a 3D design program to figure out all the richt measurements. Making the template was more difficult then last time because I wanted the lampshade to hide the lightbulb in such a way that the light would shine through but not blind the eye. To do this I wanted the vertical ribs/lamellae to be placed at an angle.







The light source I used in this lampshade is a LED Edison style light bulb. Great bulbs because they’re energy efficient and don’t get hot. This BoxHat prototype was entirely made by hand. No electrical machine was used. I used a fretsaw which is designed to make very fine and delicate cuts. Still this endproduct [prototype] shows rough edges, but it also shows the design I had in mind. Especially the angle of the ribs made me wonder what the lampshade would be like. If BoxHat would go in production it would also be treated with a fire retardant spray.

Still looking for the best and most affordable way to produce these 7 mm thick cardboard lampshades. They’re beautiful and quite robust, but not easy to process using a laser cutter.





Photos © Gilbert de Rooij



Like I said last time, of course I could create this lamp using MDF [Medium-density fibreboard], very popular now, but that wouldn’t be upcycling. That’s why I’m still looking for another more successful way to create an upcycled cleaner cut version of this design. And until then I’m going to design and create several more prototype lampshades made out of discarded cardboard.

If someone has an idea on production, please share.

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