Sunburst!

After Jenny posted about DIY Sunburst mirrors (by the way, Jenny, when are you going to have your own book?  You need one, and I would pre-order!), and we heard of an impending snow in, Michelle and I decided we would get our glue on and attempt to make these suckers!

All you need is a good friend, a glass of wine, a LOT of shims, and a LOT of wood glue :)

We followed this tutorial the most.  I won't recreate all the wonderful tutorials that exist, but just a few extra notes...

--Holding rays together - some people recommended craft tape - we just used rubberbands, and they worked just fine...

--To prime or not prime: I had some extra half used cans of white spray paint laying around, so I used those as a pseudo-primer.  The shims, especially the large ones, are very porous, and I just wanted to make sure that the gold really popped.  I don't think this step is necessary though...Michelle did not prime, and hers looks fantastic.

 -Assembling the rays:  We spent a LOT of time trying to figure out how to push the rays perfectly into the middle and not have gaps around the sunburst.  We did break off some of the long shims that were pointing into the middle to allow the longer rays to fit more snugly. We finally decided that 80/20 was good enough, and we both had some gaps in between the rays, but once the mirror was on, the gaps didn't bother us.

-Hanging:  We both just had our husbands put some screws into the back of the mirror.  Sean screwed right into the shims, and it seems to be pretty solid.  They didn't screw the screws all the way down to allow us some space to wrap hanging wire around the screws. 

 We are both happy with how our mirrors turned out.  It cost us about $42 to do the whole project.   Michelle painted hers silver, and I went for gold.  I made this knowing that I didn't have a huge open wall to hang this on right now, but hoping that in our next place, it may find the perfect home!

For now, it spices up the basement a bit...