Mirrored Gold

DMS loves some mirrors (and, um, gold).  We had this 4’ mirror that I’d brought to the house from several previous places.  The frame had busted off and it was cracked; fairly unusable.  But I held onto it in the basement, thinking I might try something with it someday.

One day I was shopping at Target and found this great frame.  It was black and they didn’t have other color options, but I wanted something to make the mirror pop a bit more.  So I took it home and did a once-over with the gold spray paint.

I took the mirror and wrapped it in an old bedsheet I use as a paint tarp.  Then I essentially beat it with a hammer, smashing the mirror into bits.  That led to some great shapes, and kept all the small bits of broken glass in the sheet, so it was easy to clean up.

From there I tried to find a variety of pieces; mostly the bigger or medium sized bits.  Using the frame’s backing (what you normally put back on after you put a picture in a frame; it locks into the frame itself to keep everything in place) as my base, I spread the mirror pieces out till I had a pattern I liked, starting with the three biggest pieces near the corners.  Then I filled in the space between with slightly smaller pieces, and moved things till I was happy.

Once I had a design I was happy with, I used a hot glue gun to attach the mirror pieces to the backing, flipping and gluing them one at a time.

After the pieces had dried, I went over them one by one with Windex, and did the same with both sides of the frame’s glass.

Really happy with the end result. We hung it between two candelabras and it looks great with them lit.  As with all mirrors it expands the way the room feels.  And with the fractured pieces chopping the reflection up, it’s endlessly interesting, breaking up the reflection of my guitar, or our books, or me!