Blingy Mirror

I love the sunburst mirrors that have come back into style.  I already had a large round mirror that I'd bought at Lowe's a few years ago.  It was frame-less, but pretty big - 28 inches across, and was only $40.00.  At the time that was the best price I could find on a round mirror large enough to hang over a dresser.  But I digress.  I've been finding projects to DIY sunburst mirrors (they tend to be $$$ in stores) on Pinterest.  Here's a few I pinned:  meijosjoy mirror, thriftyandchic mirror, bystephanielynn mirror

The first one really caught my eye; I love the sparkle.  I was at a friend's house a few days ago talking this project over.  For the sake of internet anonymity, we'll give them the super secret blog names of Squirrel and Mrs. Squirrel.  Squirrel and Mr. Backwoods have been friends since they were kids.  Mrs. S is my craft buddy, she totally DIY'd her wedding and reception decor last fall.  She's also really into blingy stuff, too and for her wedding decor she ordered a roll of this stuff called diamond wrap from save-on-crafts.com.  It looks like rhinestones, but its actually molded plastic that's faceted and painted chrome so that it sparkles but costs much less than yards and yards of rhinestones would have.   We decided that the diamond wrap would be great for sparkle on the mirror and we could just peel the strips off of the jars she had used in her centerpieces and not have to cut any of the new unused stuff.

 I knew I had some leftover PVC in the crawl space from when we ran waterlines from the well last Spring, so I had some material on hand to fashion my border shapes.  I dug out a piece and the next day when I stopped by their house, Squirrel was nice enough to not only cut about 300 slices of it (which was actually way more than I needed, I didn't get out to the garage to tell him how many until he'd already cut a ton), but he also found a scrap of pipe he had with a smaller diameter and cut some of that, too. 

My supplies:

I took that shot after I'd already glued the pieces I used for my frame together, so those are some of my extra rings, not the actual amount I used.  I wiped each slice with a wet rag before gluing because I forgot to before he cut them and it had been laying under my house for nearly a year.  If I had this to do over, I would have taken some acetone or nail polish remover and tried to get the printing off the outside of the pipes.  You'll see later why, it would have saved me a few steps and blunders.  Here's a shot once I had laid out my pattern and glued the rings to each other.  I haven't attached them to the mirror yet.

This is the point where you would paint the rings if you wish, if you manage to remove the printing before gluing its not completely necessary.  Spray paint would be the ideal thing to use.  I was impatient; I didn't have spray paint, the store is far away, and I had a bottle of silver craft paint and a foam brush on hand.  It didn't work too well.  Craft paint adheres to the rough cut sides, but the curved sides of the pipe where the writing is that needed covered the most, were too slick.  I sort of just tried to slap it on a little heavier wherever there was writing and went with it.

After all that handling, the frame came apart a few times in places.  I had been going to just hang the frame separately over top of the mirror, but it wasn't sturdy enough.  So I glued it directly on the mirror.  Then we cut the diamond wrap into 1 row strips and started carefully hot gluing them to the face of the rings.  I say "we" because after sitting on the floor for a few hours my back started to hurt and Babe Jr. offered to take over.

Here's a closer shot. Since the diamond wrap is plastic, the strips conformed to the curves easily with the hot glue as long as we glued a little at a time.

 

You can see my paint job issues here.  Thankfully once it was up on the wall its not noticeable.  

I had started the project in the evening as soon as we got home from the Squirrels' house.  We put it away when Mr. Backwoods got home from work.  The next morning Babe Jr started back as soon as she got out of bed and had it finished before I'd drank my first cup of coffee.  

There is a mounting bracket on the back of my mirror since this one is large and meant to hang on the wall. In a lot of the pinterest projects they use smaller craft mirrors, so you would have to come up with your own method of hanging.  I had to screw mine into a stud and use a drywall anchor for one of the screws, this mirror is heavy.  Here it is all done hanging over my bed.

I love it!  For my wall space, I couldn't do a huge elaborate frame.  With a smaller mirror I probably would have used a lot more circles and made it more "sunbursty."

I'm getting a new comforter set and curtains SOON.  So this is the beginning of my bedroom makeover.  I'm thinking of selling my bedroom suit.  I definitely want to replace that headboard with an upholstered one and the dresser mirror is huge and has the same wrought iron on the top.  I want to get a flat screen TV to replace the 20 year old one we have and hang it over the dresser.  Rather than try to store the headboard and mirror somewhere, I may try to get rid of all of it and just buy a new dresser.  If you know me in real life and know anyone who wants to buy them, please let me know!!