Summer Sunburst Mirror

Phew! That is my sigh of relief that I am finally able to post this project! It's certainly been a long time coming considering I hinted at the fact that it was "in the works" nearly two and a half weeks ago. And, in truth, it was! I even finished it arguably on schedule. The problem was essentially that I am a ditz.

See, I didn't want to post the finished project until I could hang it somewhere, because on my floor it just looked quite sad and very un-sunburst like.  But, I was reluctant to hang it because I'm leaving my apartment in a little over a month and that would have been just one more hole to mend in my  rented walls (which will, no doubt, resemble swiss cheese once I take down the pictures I already have hanging everywhere).

Now, I'm a ditz because it only dawned on me yesterday that it would be perfectly simple and consequence-free to move one of my pictures long enough to photograph my sunburst mirror hanging in its place. I know, I'm a moron. My cheeks are ablaze with embarrassment as I write this, but I figured I should own up to that rather than mislead you by having you assume the project itself actually took that long.

There is no shortage of tutorials for sunburst mirrors in the blog world, and you can pretty much take your pick of the litter as to which one you'd like to follow. Some of the bloggers out there made their mirrors with the wood shims turned sideways, which was a very cool look indeed, but was considerably more involved and time-consuming. I happened to like the look of the simpler version where the shims are laid flat and arranged in a circle, so that's the one I made.

Here's what you'll need:

•  8" wood shims from Lowe's
• Elmer's wood glue
• Gorilla glue
• 12" mirror
• 12" flat circular form

The first thing you'll need to do is arrange your shims. I saw on some of the tutorials that people used shims of different lengths to get the look they wanted. Well, being the newbie that I am, I didn't have the foresight for that when I was at Lowe's and I bought shims that were all the same length. So, my solution was to arrange my first layer of shims lined up on the circle's inner edge, then to insert the second layer offset about an inch from the first layer and stagger them in the holes. I glued it all down using the wood glue.

Here's how it looked as it was drying, just so you can get an idea of my amateur design process.

After it had sufficiently dried (and it was surprisingly sturdy once it had, I might add!) I got to work on painting it, first with the trusty grey primer, then with color. I semi-agonized over which color to use because, as I've mentioned before, my color scheme for my home decor is red and black, and I wasn't entirely sure how either of those would look. But in the end, I went with black. I figured it can generally pass as chic and modern on most surfaces, why not on a sunburst mirror, too?

Once the paint dried, it was time to add the mirror, which I did using magical Gorilla glue. I weighted it down for added adhesion with some of my favorite text books from undergrad (seriously.... why hasn't a sarcasm font been instated yet?)

I let that dry overnight and it was finished! Then, finally, after my embarassingly-long lapse in intelligent cognitive reasoning, I hung my mirror for all to (temporarily) see!

Judging by this trial run, I think it will look great in my new house! It's not too fancy by any stretch of the imagination, but I still like it and think it will look at least moderately snazzy on a wall in my new bedroom. That about wraps up this long overdue post....until next time, friends!