I'm finally in the process of redoing our bedroom. Not a complete overhaul, but just freshening it up a little. I was a little stuck on what I should do with it for a while, so I just started mentally collecting the pieces that caught my eye, and pretty soon, I had a complete picture of what I wanted to do. One of my absolute favorite things lately has been sunburst mirrors, and I knew early on that I wanted to make and hang one above our bed. All credit for this one goes to Centsational Girl. Buying one of these was out of the question, because a good one will cost upwards of 200 bucks. So I started doing research on how different people were making these mirrors, and her idea really jumped out at me. So this is my take on her idea.
The premise for this idea is to use paint stir sticks. That's right... the cheaply-made paint stirrers that you get for free with a can of paint and have "Home Depot" lovingly smacked across them. Here's one thing I learned as I was trekking across Denver collecting free paint sticks... Benjamin Moore makes the absolute best paint sticks. They're actually kind of awesome for what they are. So find a store that carries Benjamin Moore paint and get to schmoozing, because that's where I managed to acquire about 30 of mine.
So let's talk other supplies. Along with the paint sticks (I wound up needing 46, but it depends on the size of the mirror and I got a few extras so that I could throw out the losers of the bunch), you will also need a round mirror, mine was 8 inches, but anything in that ballpark will work beautifully. I also bought craft paint, mine were by folk art in several different shades of gold that I mixed for the shade I ultimately wanted. You'll also need an embroidery hoop that is the same size as your mirror... mine was wood, but if you buy a plastic one, just buy plastic spray paint, cause you're gonna be painting it. I bought a square wood piece (a few pictures down), and then actually bought a squared dowel that I secured to the back of the base. The reason for that was because you need it to be thick enough to screw picture hangers into, and making a border with the dowel worked perfectly. If that part doesn't make sense, just email me, and I'm happy to talk about it ad nauseam with you. Last supplies: picture hangers and either gorilla glue or wood glue. Gorilla glue foams up like crazy which I find annoying, so I used wood glue and it worked awesome. Hot glue I'm sure would also work fine.
I primed all of the paint sticks in white before adding the gold color, just to make sure that I got the color I wanted, but that's up to you if you want to do that. Also, most paint sticks have a curve in them, so I cut half of them off at the curve, and these went on the top layer. The rest are on the bottom so the curve doesn't show, and I wanted the top and bottom to be different lengths, so I only cut about half an inch off of the rest of them. I also painted the embroidery hoop to match the paint sticks.
The next step after painting and cutting down the paint sticks is to glue the mirror to the wood base, and then glue the embroidery hoop on top of the mirror. This is the one part where I used gorilla glue, because wood glue obviously wouldn't work on the mirror. You definitely want to give both of these time to set, because gorilla glue dries slower. Once the glue had dried, I secured the picture hangers to the back. Do this now, because it will be exponentially harder to do after you've finished the mirror.
After those set, you can start setting down your first layer of paint sticks until you have them arranged the way you want them. At that point, it's time to start glueing them down.
Once your first layer has set, you can start on the second layer. After those dried, I took a look over the whole thing and touched any imperfections up with a little paint.
After everything has set and dried, you are done, my friends! Hang that thing wherever your little heart desires. I couldn't be happier with how this came out (after sleeping through the first night with one eye open because I was sure that it would come crashing down on us at 3 am. it didn't.) All in all, it cost me about $30 in supplies, and a weekend's worth of work.
It was actually a really fun weekend project, and once we get more of this room put together, I'll post what the whole room looks like after its mini-makeover.
Happy DIY-ing!
