I was inspired to make this after seeing several different versions on Pinterest. I combined a couple of different styles, but you can find my favorites here and here. I’d love to make the first one, but it was a bit ambitious for me at this point in my crafting “career.” That one is on my goal list for the future.
I have mixed feelings about how my mirror turned out. Definitely not as professional-looking as I was hoping for, but then again it was my first try.
Here it is:
Here is what I used for the project:
Small and large wooden craft sticks (basically the same thing as popsicle sticks and tongue depressors), a round mirror purchased from Michaels, hot glue, gorilla glue, glass pearls, small wooden rectangles (unfinished dollhouse shutters would work great – saw them at Hobby Lobby recently), mounting hardware, ruler, marker, paint.
First I laid out all of the sticks and small wooden rectangles in my garage and spray painted them with primer, then a coat of white spray paint. DISASTER. The wood still showed through and it kept absorbing the paint even after 2 coats. I then painted a coat of regular interior latex paint that I already had. Still too sheer for my liking. I wanted really good coverage, but if you want to be able to see the wood grain then this method might work fine for you. Eventually I ended up adding yet another coat, this time of acrylic craft paint, after the mirror was totally assembled. I should’ve just done this from the beginning. (Note to self.)
I then hung the beads from a clothes hanger and spray painted those. This worked fine for them, although I still added a coat of acrylic paint when I painted the rest of the mirror. Plastic beads would work fine for this too. Think Mardi Gras-style.
After the paint was dry (I did this over a few days), I turned my mirror over and measured, making sure I marked lines that were evenly spaced out. I then played around with a layout until I found one that I liked and thought was easy enough to execute. I hot glued the sticks in place, later adding Gorilla glue where the hot glue didn’t seem to be holding strongly enough. (Tip: Gorilla glue works GREAT on pretty much anything, but be careful. It does expand as it dries!)
I then turned the mirror over, gluing the little wood rectangles on, and then hot gluing the beads around the edge of the mirror. After all of the glue dried, I painted a coat of acrylic onto the whole mirror, then later Gorilla-glued mounting hardware to the back.
I haven’t decided yet where I am going to put the mirror. I may play around with it a little more and add more sticks.
Leave a Reply