I loved all the pretty details on the frame and it was in really good condition. I hoped it would be the right size for a painting that Brandon gave me one Christmas of Christ as a young boy sleeping on his mothers lap but alas the frame was too small. So instead I decided to paint it and make it a mirror, and here is how I did it!
Step one was priming the frame so that the paint would adhere nicely (and so that I wouldn't need to sand off the glossy finish) I typically use Killz primer but I have heard Zinsser is a great option as well. They key to painting a frame or anything with details like this is to be extra cautious that the paint doesn't pool up between all the small creases otherwise you lose some of the depth of these details.
Now on to the part that made me want to do a whole lot of cursing. Sometimes you watch/read tutorials and you think to yourself "piece of cake! I can do that!" and sometimes you're wrong. I'm here to tell you that cutting glass is not as easy as people make it look. But I'm also here to tell you that it's okay to fail once (or twice) because you learn from your mistakes and it makes it all the more gratifying when you finally succeed.
After looking through the online classifieds for a cheap mirror that I could use, I found someone selling an old dresser top mirror for just $5 and jumped on it! Here they are next to each other.
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| 7 years bad luck |
I'm a pretty dang optimistic person, and I have a tendency to think things won't go wrong so when they do it completely catches me off guard and kind of shatters my entire universe. So after pacing around for a while muttering under my breath and trying to figure out how to clean up my mess the optimism kicked back in and I decided it wasn't the end of the world and I could use the rest of the mirror to practice with and figure out where I went wrong.
I learned a couple of things and for starters this particular mirror had an awful plastic-y backing on it that I think is part of the reason it didn't snap in one piece like it was supposed to.
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| Whatever it was, it was a pain to peel off |
I also think that since I was doing such a large piece I needed help holding my straight edge so that I could focus on applying enough pressure on my glass cutter. So I bought another $5 mirror and volunteered Brandon to help me in round two so that he could hold my straight edge down for me. The second attempt actually went much better with the exception of my very last cut. The very end snapped off uneven and when I put it into the frame you could barely see the tip that broke off.
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| So close!!! |
It took me a while to come across another cheap mirror for sale but one day Brandon texted me a picture of one he found for me during his lunch break-that's love. So I dove right into round three (and by "dove right into" I mean I stalled for like 2 weeks because I was so afraid of ruining it again) I did the first cut and it went perfectly, so perfectly I wanted to cry. Then I traced the line for the second cut and before I snapped it I jokingly asked Brandon if we should pray. But seriously I may have said a silent prayer/plea in my head begging for it to work. The second snap wasn't perfectly clean but we sanded it down with some heavy grit sandpaper aaaaand TaDaaaaa!!
I'm telling myself that I only spent about $20 for this project which includes the frame, used mirror, and spray paint. The other paints and things I already had on hand, and the failure mirrors are salvageable enough that I'm using them for other projects. Even if I did count those in my final cost it's still cheaper than buying a nice big framed mirror like this. So I'm calling this a win. A big frustrating win.
