Sunburst Mirror

    I am so excited to share this project with you.  I've been a very busy girl lately and have been feeling super productive.  Of course mainly I have been focusing on Gregory's birthday gifts and now preparing to start working on the decorations and party favors....honeing in on crunch time over here!  All the while as mentioned before we have started painting in our home..... forget Spring cleaning we are just jumping around everywhere in productivity!  Along with the projects that I feel are of priority I have had projects that nag me constantly so I must fit them in as well! :-)  This is one of those projects!  I actually saw this when I first started blogging a couple of months ago in the blog What The Graham?.  I imediately started collecting stir sticks and after a lot of other projects I finally got all the stir sticks needed and got to work!

I got the mirror (it's upside down in the picture sorry!) at Michaels for around $7...I used it to trace a circle onto a diaper box b/c the card board is sturdier than some.

I used my Xacto knife to cut out that circle.

I then traced a smaller circle on it so I would be able to make sure my stir sticks were all evenly placed

I laid out my stir sticks so that I made sure I had enough to go all the way around twice

Sorry I don't have a picture of this but I cut half of my stir sticks down about 3 inches so the top layer would be shorter than the bottom layer.

I painted my stir sticks black....if you have been following me for any time you know that my room is black and white so of course they are black!

I started glueing the bottom layer of stir sticks useing a hot glue gun

Then started glueing down the top layer of shorter stir sticks

I glued down the mirror

Okay...be careful it is flimsy...but it's just going to be hanging on my wall...I don't plan to do a lot of moving around with it.  My husband suggested useing his nailer to nail each stir stick down to a wooden plaque but I didn't feel like waiting until I could get to the store to do that.  This works for me...but if you want it to be more sturdy you may want to do something like that.  What I did to help was flip it over and shoot hot glue into every crevice for some extra hold.

To hang I simply took a piece of ribbon and hot glued it to the cardboard but to make sure it stayed I shot a couple of staples through and then topped it with hot glue again.....It definitely did the job!

Here we have it....I LOVE it!  The basket as created here and the sunburst fill this space wonderfully.... It was blank for 4 years....how awful is that!?  I had many ideas in the past but never "did" anything about it....I'm in love with this and my stepmom came over this evening and her exact words were "I love your sunburst....maybe I could make one?"  The pictures do not give it justice!  I realise there is a lot of room for improvement and I plan to use the basket and the headboard surface to decorate for special occasions.

Oh I almost forgot the BEST part!  I paid about $7 for the mirror at Michaels, I got the stir sticks at Home Depot for free...a few here and a few there...., I already had the black paint which I've used on several projects and will be continuing to use, I just cut a circle out of an empty diaper box from Gregory's diapers, I already had the hot glue gun and glue, the little ribbon on the back was scraps from another project....Yeah...add that up!  $7!!!!


Inspired by What The Graham?