My lamp didn't come with a lamp cover, so decided to make my own.

There's a few ways to make a dome-like lamp cover, but we have access to a vacuum former and I wanted an excuse to use it. I was looking around the shop for something that would have roughly the right shape, after a few moments I decided to go out and buy a watermelon to cut in half. The dome shape would be perfect, and I love watermelon.

The vacuum former works by heating a thin sheet of plastic, the object you want to form around is placed on a vacuum table underneath the object, then the plastic sheet is lowered into the object and the vacuum table is activated. The hot plastic is then stretched around the object, when the plastic cools it hardens into the shape of the object. You know the plastic is ready to be lowered onto your object (in this case a watermelon) when it begins to droop under the heating element - as seen in image 4 and 5 in this step.

The hot plastic is dropped onto the form and the vacuum engaged. When cool the plastic will have the exact shape of the form.