DIY Velvet lamp shades

I woke up on Saturday morning to a spectacular squall! Gosh I love rainy days!! I really should live somewhere other than Southern California, where I could enjoy a few more rainy days a year! But anyway... I spent most of the day relaxing, lazing around the house, but by the afternoon I was ready for a craft project. I have been on the hunt for new lamp shades for our bedroom for a few months now, and bought same plain, off-white shades thinking I would get fancy and customize them :) I had some success a few months ago making my variation of this lamp shade for our living room:

So I have been on the lookout for the perfect fabric for covering my bedroom lamp shades - I knew I wanted something elegant, and something cozy, like velvet, but nothing more specific than that. While I've been trying to decide on a fabric, I had noticed that the plain shades seemed to let a yellowish light through, which I didn't love, so I decided to spray paint them black, to block some of the light. Looking at my spray painted shades, I realized that while I would NEVER have guessed it, what I really wanted was black velvet lamp shades. Since we've recently moved into a much bigger space from a tiny apartment (where our bedroom was one of two rooms in the 'house'), we kind of have a blank canvas to work with, so I feel like these black lamp shades will help guide our other decorating choices, from art to pillows to paint(eventually, one day) and I love them. Here's how I did it:

I started by finding my trusty glue gun (the hardest part of this project actually!) and cutting a piece of fabric a little larger than the lamp shade. Then I glued the fabric around the outside of the shade, working quickly and burning myself once in the process :S

Then I flipped the shade over and glued the fabric under the top and bottom edges, and trimmed the excess fabric. To give a more finished look, I trimmed the shades with black grosgrain ribbon.

Here's the finished product (please excuse our mess):

I love them - and every time I bump my tiny little blister and it hurts like crazy, I remind myself of these lovely shades :)