DIY Sunburst Mirror

Sunburst mirrors have become so big lately. I really love the look of them, but they are typically pretty expensive like these Horchow Mirror, Suzanne Kesler sunburst mirror. So I looked at some other blogs and found an easy one I could make. I got the directions from The Lettered Cottage's blog. I went ahead and ambitiously bought all the required materials:

• 2 packages of cedar wood shims (these were at Home Depot and not my local hardware store. Make sure they are the longer cedar shims)
• liquid nails
• 1 12 inch wood wreath frame (from Michaels)
• 1 8 inch wood wreath frame (from Michaels)
• 1 can of spray paint primer
• 1 can of pure gold (or any color!) spray paint
• 1 10 inch round mirror (from hobby lobby)

 Once I had all of my materials, I laid out the mirror to make sure it was how I wanted it. Initially, I was going to have two layers like they did in the Lettered Cottage's mirror

See how they have one row of shims about 2 inches longer than the interior shims. It looked really good that way, but it also looked good with just one layer. In the end I went with just one layer.

As a result, I deviated from their directions a little. I used liquid nails to glue each shim to both wreath frames. I did this on my back porch so that the fumes would be minimal and it could dry without being disturbed.

I continued gluing shims down around the entire wreath frame, making sure that the shim ends went with the circular pattern. Then I put another layer of shims to fill in spaces. I used lots of glue and when I was finished I put some heavy books on top of it while it dried. I let it dry for 24 hours.

Then John made a clothes line in our backyard for me to hang the mirror on. We did this so we could spray paint the mirror more easily. You can barely see the string in the picture below.

After it was strung up, I sprayed the entire thing with two light and even coats of primer. Keep your arm moving the entire time you are spray painting to avoid globs.

Once the primer dried, I sanded any rough edges of the shims. If you want it to look really nice you could spend a lot of time making it look smooth, but I just sanded down some wild splinters. Then I sprayed the entire thing with 3 light even coats of gold spray paint, letting it dry in between each coat.
This is what it looked like afterward

After it was dry, I glued the mirror on using liquid nails. Then I put the large books back on the mirror to hold in place while it was drying.

This is what the final product looked like! I love it and can't wait to hang it over our bed. And speaking of our bedroom, we have been busy working on improving it, so there should be some updates on that later in the week. Also, since I didn't do the second tier of shims on the mirror, I had enough left over for a smaller one. I repeated the same process except I used one 6 inch wreath wood frame and a 6 inch mirror. This is how it came out

This guy will probably go somewhere in our formal living room or dining room, but who knows! John is going to attach picture hooks to the back of these, so when he does I'll add a post on how he did that. This mirror was so easy and fun, and cost under $20.