DIY Sunburst Mirror Tutorial

In my last post I told y'all about my DIY Sunburst mirror. Now I'll give you all the info on how I made it! It was SO EASY and if I can do it, you can do it. Believe me! The blog that I originally found a DIY tutorial on is J and J Home. I did a few things differently so I will break down for you how I did it all...

Materials (All my supplies can be found at Michaels and Home Depot)

• a 12" floral ring (got mine at michaels)
• an 18" floral ring
• a mirror, mine is 10" but you can get one as big or as small as you like
• wood shims (Got them at Home Depot) They are packaged and I think there are 12 in each pack. I used about 6 packs. look at the packs you pick to make sure that they are very similar in color. Some of the shims I bought were oddly discolored and so I ended up getting another pack bc certain ones just stuck out like sore thumb! the packs are only $1.68 though so no harm!
• wood glue
• gorilla glue
• some way to hang it. I used picture hanging wire. 

FIRST! Put the hanging wire on the floral ring. there are little holes in the floral rings. Thread it through a couple so that you can hang it when you are done =) Its much easier to get the wire through the holes before, I did not think of this so Im giving you a heads up. 

I first arranged the first layer starting at the edge of the small floral ring hanging over onto the bigger one. after I liked the way it looked, I started gluing! The other tutorial used hot glue, but I thought long term, that wood glue would hold better. Wood glue dried a little slower, thus the next picture...

all the "weights!" I went around my house looking for heavy things that were small so that I could continue working on the sections not yet glued. It takes about 20 minutes to get good enough dried to take the weights off, but make sure it is dry enough that it won't move.

here is the second layer. I did the second layer of shims in between the first and then the third layer I did every other in between to add a different sort of dimension. if that makes any sense! make each layer a little shorter obviously. after its all done let it dry for a good while. Then grab your gorilla glue (which is tricky and expands, so don't use a lot!) I applied it with a little sponge brush bc they are 99 cents and will most definitely need to be thrown away once gorilla glue gets on it. Apply a very thin layer of gorilla glue to your mirror. Put some weight on top of it. I used all the Harry Potter books and the heavy bookends. You may want to measure to ensure the mirror is in the very center, I eye balled everything and luckily it looks pretty centered but if you are a perfectionist then measure =) I didn't try to hang it until the next day but it only takes about an hour to fully dry.

ta da! 

for now mine is still its natural color, but if you wanted to spray paint, paint, or stain, it would probably be  littler easier before applying the mirror. just a bit of advice =)

again, this only cost me around $23 and about 2 hours. And that was mostly because both my girls were awake when I was doing it. Kennedy was my handy helper =)