Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Mirror Revamp

Hi

I am back again.Shocking,isn't it? Two days in a row!Well,there is a reason behind it.Yes,everything has an explanation and the expalanation is that I had taken off from work so I had spare time to work on some things.Going back to work tomorrow :-( so back to my normal,infrequent posting.

Anyway,today we are going to revamp a mirror.I am living in a rented flat right now and there are some awful plastic framed mirrors in each of the bathrooms.I am going to  move into my own apartment really really soon,so I did not want to bother with buying new ones.But why live with ugliness when you can beautify for cheap.Long story ahead,prepare yourself.


So for this project I took one of the mirrors from our guest bathroom.It had a plastic frame made to look like pine wood apparently.Me no likey.Things had to change .



First step.Sand the whole thing with a fine sandpaper.Wipe it clean.

I wanted to try the crackling effect on the plastic so I spray painted it a bronzy metallic colour.


Let it dry and applied the crackling medium.The instructions said that one needs to wait till the medium becomes tacky.Well,I couldn't figure out whether it was tacky or not.Also,this medium was meant for acrylic paints and I was using spray paint so I was clueless if it would work out or not.I still applied a topcoat of flat black spray paint over the crackling medium and waited and waited and waited.Okay,I am lying,I just waited for one minute and figured that no crackling is happening.So I took a stiff paintbrush and tried to run it over the black paint to "give the crackle an incentive to crackle".It worked a little bit .The bronze started showing through.Everybody else liked the effect but I didn't so much.So back to the drawing board ...err to the balcony to cover up the mistakes.

I sprayed the whole thing over again with black.Applied two coats.The good thing is that all the experimentation with the crackling and brushing and what not had given some texture so when I applied the coats of paint,it had some sembelance to a wood grain.Also appied a coat of varnish to seal the whole thing.

The next part was beautifying the mirror.Fortunately I could remove the mirror and the cardboard backing from the frame so I did not have to worry about paint getting on those.I then used a stencil and glass etching paste to etch some designs on the mirror.It's very easy folks.

All you need is a stencil.(Contact paper,sticky back paper,transparencies would be best for creating your stencils).You just position it where you want.Secure it with a tape and cover the whole design with an etching paste.Make sure that you use a thick coating.Leave the whole thing alone for 30 minutes.Wash the area with the etching paste under running water.Once the paste is gone,remove the stencil and wipe and dry the surface and you are done.




Note : I did read somewhere that after the 30 minutes of processing time you can transfer the paste back into the bottle and it can be reused.I didn't try it this time though.

Here's the end result :









Okay, so the next item on the agenda is beautifying the frame.I did not want to overembellish it so I chose a grosgrain ribbon and glued it to the vertical edeges of the mirror.

All done.The whole description sounds tedious but the actual work did not take too much time and I thoroughly enjoyed it.





Hope you do too.

Note : Oh my Gawd!Have you ever tried photographing a mirror.Royal pain in the A***!Husband and I kept trying to figure out how to picture it without any distracting reflections showing up in it.Painful,I must say.So please do not go by the pics alone.It truly looks much nicer than it does in the pic.Take my word for it.;-)


Cheers!

Sumi

Submitting it for the CSI Challenge Visit thecsiproject.com







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10 comments:

  1. that turned out so good! i love that idea :) and trying to photograph a mirror....darn hard!! it looks good though.

    *come take a look at my post if you'd like :)

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  2. Well, it turned out darling - even if it didn't crack!

    I have to tell you, me & Crackle don't have a good relationship. It's really touchy. Raining - doesn't work. Too hot - may not work. And so on. I've never tried spray paint, but I think that might have been your problem.

    I do know that it reacts with acrylic paints and causes the topcoat to shrink, which causes the cracking appearance. So the propellant in the spray paint may have stopped that.

    I think you have a cute mirror w/o the cracks! And thanks for stopping by!

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  3. What a great re-do! It looks so much better, I love your clever idea of spraying the corners!
    visiting from justsewsassy.com

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  4. Cute! Your mirror turned out SO adorable! I love what you did with it!

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  5. Whoa, that looks awesome! SO much better. And I'm sorry you have to go back to work- I feel your pain.

    Thank you for participating in the Creative Therapy Session at Life in the Pitts.

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  6. That looks great - very creative ideas!!!

    I really like your blog so I started following you!

    Thanks for stopping by mine too!!!

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  7. Hi! great project. Thanks for being my first follower!I was so excited.
    Cheers-Marjorie

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  8. Hi Sumi! Thanks for visiting me. The mirror looks fabulous, a complete makeover, you'd never guess it was the same one!

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  9. Look at you with all your linking up! COOL! I love the mirror, that was a very clever idea. Yes mirrors are a royal pain in the ***! Looks great though. Debbie

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