Make a Spectatular Sunburst Mirror-Almost free!

So I may have gotten a little bit addicted to Pinterst. Once on there, I got especially excited about the home decorating projects. I may be a little cheap, and any project that I can do for the smallest amount of money but the most bang, I will make it! So I got the idea to make a paint stick sunburst mirror from ourhumbleabowed.wordpress.com. They had instructions on their "make it your self" page. I liked the idea so it was off to Home Depot to abscond with as many paint sticks as I could at a time. Luckily the paint people at Home Depot really don't care how many paint sticks you take at a time. I needed about 50 paint sticks for the project, but I was too chicken to take them all at once, so we went to the store several times over several days, taking out puppy for walks. I was feeling very awkward taking 10-15 paint sticks but they just either completely ignored me or smiled and left it at that.

Once I gathered all the paint sticks, I went to Joann's to pick up a 10inch mirror. 10 inches seemed the right size for the length of the paint sticks. I laid them all to make sure that they would fit. The first mirror I made I use white acrylic paint to paint the top and sides of each stick. They dried really fast and the color was free as I already had the acrylic paint. You can pick up a large tube of white acrylic paint at a craft store for only a couple of dollars. I used maybe a quarter of a tube.

After painting all of the sticks, I laid them out around the mirror and made one layer. I cut all of those sticks (about 26) to 8 inches. I glued them on. I originally bought Gorilla Glue to glue the sticks to the mirror, but after a test run with on some scrap wood, I found that the Gorilla Glue expanded and made a really thick seal, that while really strong, added too much depth to the mirror. So I just used hot glue instead, which made a really nice seal with the acrylic paint. After I glued on the first row, I laid out the second row and cut all of the sticks to 10 inches. I placed a Frisbee on the back of the mirror to help me keep the sticks even while I glued them down. I just eyeballed the gluing, but I made sure to not just glue in one direction, but to stop and go to the other side every couple of sticks so that they would meet nicely in the middle. I used a scrap piece of wood as a hanger on the back of the mirror.

I thought that mirror looked great in our guest room. We have a very yellow room, and the white paint on the sticks made a great whitewashed look. The mirror cost only $4.99 to complete as the paint sticks were free, and I already had the hot glue and the paint. After I made the first mirror, I decided to try again but make the mirror for our living room. We have blue walls with silver and chocolate brown accents.

I picked up silver pray paint from Home Depot for $3.49 and a new mirror from Joann's (this time I used a 40% off coupon!). When I glued the mirror, sometimes the hot glue would pop off of the silver paint, so I lightly sanded the ends of the sticks so that the glue would stick better. I think that the mirror looks great in my house. The silver really sands out and almost looks metallic, but softer somehow. Let me know if you try the project yourself and post any great tips below.