MIrror 3 of 3

If I have taken one photo of this mirror, I have taken fifty!!! Finally I have managed to get a halfway decent picture to share with you :-)

I glimmer misted the mirror and stamped some flourishes in red and some cogs & gears in brown. Then I embossed some metal in the bigshot, but the colour wasn't quite right - ten second studio "bronzed god", it's a very cold brown so I alcohol inked it with ginger ink. Then I punched a square out of each pattern and stuck them on, along with some mosaic tiles and pearls. A charm made from beads bought in Venice completes the mirror, I attached it with a tiny screw eye I found in our local DIY store - I bought several, so I will be hanging all sorts of things from items I decorate in the future :-)

The second photo shows all three mirrors in their (miraculously level!) permanent position on the wall. I now need to go to Ikea to get some more, I have so many ideas........ :-)

Mirror, mirror, on the wall......

I haven't blogged for a while, mainly because I have been trying to make progress on a piece of cross stitch :-)

Last weekend was November craft weekend, so I thought I would decorate the second of my Ikea mirrors. I had bought some decoupage papers at Ally Pally and decided this would be an ideal use for them. My original plan was to alternate the darker colour with two paler ones, but when they were all overlapped, the darker one showed through the lighter on the overlap and it looked quite odd. So I covered the whole mirror in the darker paper and used one of the pale ones on top to look like broken shards of mirror glass :-)

The swirly corners were painted in acrylic and then sprayed with glimmer mist. The mosaic tiles were left over from another project and I only had ten - spent a while trying to work out how to use them all to best advantage! A frame of flat back pearls completed the front. I hadn't wrapped the paper over the edges very well, so I stuck a strip of metal all the way around!

It was quite difficult to photograph - one pic with flash and the other without, hope it gives you some idea of how it looks!

Two down, one more to go......

Decorated Ikea mirror

A few months ago, Sy got some mirrors from Ikea and I asked her if she could grab three for me too. They have been sitting on the shelf ever since ...... not because I can't think of what to do with them, rather I can think of too many ways to decorate them and find it difficult to settle on one idea!

So here is the "metal" mirror. It was inspired by a patchwork metal tutorial on Alix's blog. I embossed several pieces of metal, using Ten Second Studio moulds and Cuttlebug embossing folders. Then I spent hours filling the back of them with a quick drying filler - this is so that when the piece is handled the embossing doesn't get pushed back down :-) The mirror was covered in TSS killer tape, I left the red protective film on, just lifting it in the area I was sticking each piece. I dithered trying to decide whether to do squares or organic curvy shapes ....... went for the curves and regretted it after a couple of pieces.... took much longer than squares would have LOL.

Alix had ribbon on her tutorial for the joins between the metal pieces, but I rather fancied using up some of my bead stash ..... so I applied some matte accents to most of the joins and waited for it to go off a little so the beads would stick instantly.... this was quite tricky and those beads did not want to behave!

Then came all the embellishments - mosaic tiles around the edge of the mirror, a couple of charms (keys), blingy earrings (the two owls and the jewelled circle, a large button, some more mosaic tiles here and there and some nailheads. I left the whole lot to dry overnight and I am still not sure those beads are secure ...... LOL.

Next day I painted the edges - which of course I should have done first - with Precious Metal paint in bronze.

Now I have to decide where to hang it :-)