Sunburst Mirror Tutorial {Naptime Ingenuity}

I have wanted a sunburst mirror forever. They are groovy and cool and vintage. They also come with an extremely high price tag. Since I didn't have an extra $300 (or even $30) laying around, I decided to make one. And I even got to use spray paint. Gold spray paint. Which makes me feel gansta'. And that is sometimes always a good thing.

This was my inspiration pic (from Pinterest, of course). The mirror is from West Elm, but I don't think it's available anymore. Other mirrors similar to this are between $200 and $400. Ouch!

Soooo ... I used a few things I had on hand and a pack of bamboo skewers from the dollar store to create my own.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Le Sunburst Mirror des Walker:

Here's how I did it.

Materials:

Pack of bamboo skewers - $1

Gold spray paint - on hand or about $2.99 (you will only use a little bit)

Round mirror(s) - on hand or about $1

Feeling like a bad ants gansta' whilst wielding aforementioned gold spray paint - priceless

You will probably have on hand:

Fishing line

Glue gun

Glue sticks

Pencil

Ruler

The total cost for this project was about $1.50. Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!

Here's whatcha do:

1. Lay your mirror out somewhere with lots of space, like your kitchen table. If your mirror has a frame, get rid of it ... by whatever means necessary. I may or may not have used a hammer and butter knife. I plead the fifth.

Yo

2. Take your skewers and arrange them around your mirror in a manner that is pleasing to you. I followed the design of the picture above, but you can do anything you want. Bear in mind that most skewers are only one foot long, so if you want to do something on a larger scale, you will need a bigger mirror for the center. Or longer skewers. Duh.

3. Once you have an arrangement you like, take your skewers and spray paint them gold (or silver or pink or green ... whatever strikes your fancy).

4. Now it's time to get technical. If you don't want a haphazard look, you're going to have to measure and evenly space the "rays" of your sun. What you need to do is divide your mirror into slices like a pie. Then it will be much easier to get things into the proper position. My mirror measured 4" across, so I drew two perpendicular lines that intersected at the center, giving me four sections to work with.

5. Get gluing! Using your hot glue gun, carefully affix each of your skewers to the back of your mirror.

(see the lines I drew to keep everything from going wonky?)

6. Finally, use hot glue to affix a bit of fishing line across the back of your mirror for hanging purposes. I also added another little mirror to the front.

(fishing line ... which you can't see cuz its invisible ... awesome)

Voila! You just saved $300 on your car insurance by switching to Geico with a little ingeniuty. Groovy!

Thanks for stopping by,

Caiti