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One way to give your home a personal touch is to decorate it with DIY items. A wide field of activity opens up when decorating. The most ordinary item can be turned, at least into an original one. For example, mirror decor turns an ordinary piece of glass into a stylish and original thing.
Basic principles of decorating mirrors
DIY mirror decor is made using a variety of materials, including those that are usually sent to the trash can, and if bought, they cost very little. For example, tubes from old newspapers or magazines. In some cases they are used without staining, in others they are dyed. It is more convenient to paint in the form of a spray – it is applied in an even thin layer, staining occurs many times faster than when using a brush. You can also use broken chinaware, a mirror, colored glass, shells, pebbles, rhinestones, glass drops, buttons, ropes, plastic bottles, branches, wooden planks and sticks, plastic spoons and other strange things.
All this wealth is usually glued onto transparent silicone. It is sold in hardware stores, is available in small tubes or larger cartridges for a construction gun. It is more convenient to work with a gun – it is easier to control the effort and get the right portion of glue, which is problematic with an ordinary tube.
Please note that silicone is acidic and neutral. Acid until it dries, it smells very much like vinegar and you can only work with it in a well-ventilated area. Neutral silicone sealant does not smell like anything, but is more expensive. Still acidic, until it hardens, it can corrode the paint that is applied to the decor. When buying, pay attention to the setting time. This is the time during which you can still fix something, move it. As soon as the glue begins to polymerize, nothing can be done – it is covered with a rigid film. The average time for the formation of a surface film is 10-20 minutes, but there are also more “long-lasting” compositions.
There are two decorating techniques:
- The decor is outside the mirror. In this case, a base is cut out of thin fiberboard or thick cardboard, which is larger than a mirror in size. In shape, it can be any – round, square, arbitrary shape. The decor is glued to the base, after the glue dries, a mirror is inserted into the finished frame.
- Decorating the mirror around the edge. In this case, the glue and all fragments are applied directly to the mirror surface.
It seems that there are small differences, but the design looks different in different techniques. The second allows you to get an openwork decor of the mirror, which, as it were, is illuminated by a reflection.
Examples of round and oval mirror decor
First, let’s talk about the decor that is “built” around the mirror. The circle is beautifully decorated. You can make a sun, a flower, a star, etc. out of it. Lots of options. Most often, the decor is also built in the form of a circle, but it can be a square, a multi-beam star, or any arbitrary shape.
From sticks or tubes of paper
You can decorate a round mirror with chopsticks for Chinese food or tubes twisted from sheets of a newspaper or magazine. If the tubes are rolled up from a newspaper, they will have to be painted. Made from thin, glossy magazine-printed paper, it can be used without dyeing. Sticks can also be painted, you can leave it as is.
For painting, find acrylic paint of the desired color in a can, lay the tubes on a sheet of unnecessary paper, paint on one side from a distance of 20-25 cm. After drying, turn over all tubes / sticks and apply paint on the other side.
The next step is silicone. Apply glue to the back of the mirror. You can – with a short strip (so that you don’t have time to freeze while you lay out the rays), you can drop it. If the back of the mirror is not protected by anything, the silicone must be neutral. The acid will dissolve the amalgam and the mirror will be damaged. Put the rays on the glue, wait until the glue grabs. After 24 hours, you can safely hang a unique mirror in place.
The mirror can be with or without a rim – your choice. Instead of sticks / straws, you can use strips of glass, wood, plastic, etc.
From plastic spoons
In this embodiment, a circle of a larger diameter is cut out of thin fiberboard or thick cardboard. how much more – choose for yourself. Lay the mirror in the center, circle it with a pencil or marker. The decor should not protrude beyond this line.
We take plastic spoons, cut off the handles from them, and glue the scoops around the perimeter of the mirror. There are three or more such layers. They look like petals. When gluing, try to place them very tightly to each other so that the substrate does not shine through. They can be set straight or slightly rotated to one side.
For better effect, they can also be dyed. The paint can be with a metallic effect, you can paint the entire decor in one color or in different ones.
After the frame is ready, glue a mirror to the center on the same silicone and admire. After drying, you can hang on the wall.
Using the same technique, you can decorate the mirror with buttons, shells, cut into circles with branches of different diameters. They even use trailers and models of cars. They are painted in some unusual color and also arranged in a circle.
Something similar can be done with a rectangular mirror. In any case, it will look good with branches and buttons cut into circles. The rest of the options are unlikely.
From plastic or cardboard rings
You can decorate the mirror with the help of rings. They can be cut from plastic pipes or glued from cardboard. The sizes of the rings can be of the same diameter or different, their width is about a centimeter or a little less.
If the rings are made of cardboard, you will need a base on which we will fix them. For these purposes, a plastic cover of a slightly smaller diameter than a mirror is suitable. We will glue the first row of rings to the sides of the lid. The second and all subsequent ones are attached to them. One of the rings of the first row is additionally fastened with a screw with a ring. We will then hang our mirror on it.
After the whole structure is glued together, we take the sequins and glue them to the ends of the rings. The work is painstaking, it takes time and patience. It is easier to hold and move sequins with tweezers and better with thin tips. This mirror decor is universal – in winter it is associated with a snowflake, in summer – with the sun.
Using the same technology, rings from a plastic pipe are glued. But they do not need a base, as they themselves are quite rigid. From them we assemble a ring of the desired diameter, glue it. When choosing an adhesive, make sure that it is designed for plastic. In fact, there is a special glue gun and glue in the rods for it. It is much more convenient for them to work, but you can adapt to ordinary silicone.
The edges of the rings do not need to be pasted over with something. They look good on their own. But in this case, they must first be processed from bumps and burrs that remain from the saw. If they were cut with special scissors, there will be almost no irregularities, but the edge will still be straight, and the rounded one looks better. The ends are processed with fine-grained sandpaper. Then they are wiped from dust, degreased (wash in water in detergent, wipe dry or dry). Only after that you can start working with glue.
From the rope
We take a thick rope. It can be synthetic or hemp. For larger sizes, you can even use a rope. From cardboard or fiberboard, we also cut out the base, which is larger than the size of the mirror. A thin layer of glue is applied to this base, a rope is laid out coil by coil.
In this case, it may be better to first glue the mirror in the center, and “wind” the ropes around it. So it turns out recessed in the frame.
Mirror decor
It is not always desirable to make a border around the mirror surface, and the decor that is applied to the mirror turns out to be more voluminous due to reflection. Therefore, basically another rule applies here – there should be free space between the decor elements. These techniques will allow you to decorate a square or round mirror – almost no difference. The main thing is to choose the right pattern or decoration method.
transparent stones
The simplest technique is to pick up the decor you like, place it along the edge of the mirror. First, you can decompose without gluing – so that there is an opportunity to correct something, move it. When the result satisfies you, we apply a drop of transparent silicone to each fragment and return it to its place.
This mirror design looks best with the use of transparent and translucent stones. They can be colored, transparent, plain.
hand-painted decoration
For this work you will need special materials. You will need:
- Glass outline. This is a transparent or colored composition in a tube with a sharp spout. It is applied to glass and mirror in the form of a thin strip. Usually outlines the contours of the picture, which is why it is called so. The contour on glass can be with roasting and without. Naturally, at home it is easier to use those without firing.
- Stained glass paints. They differ from ordinary ones in that after drying they become transparent. They are applied with brushes or squeezed out of the tube into the contour, after which they are distributed using the same brushes, swabs, cotton swabs.
- Glitters. These are shiny small fragments in the form of hexagons, stripes, circles, etc. used in decoration. Can be added to paints, varnishes (including for nails).
You will also need the usual materials: alcohol for degreasing, cotton wool, cotton buds, brushes (preferably with artificial bristles), toothpicks. You will also need a drawing that you are going to transfer to a mirror, carbon paper, adhesive tape.
We put a carbon paper on the mirror, put the drawing on top, fix it with adhesive tape, circle the drawing along the contour. Carefully remove paper and carbon paper. We take a tube with a contour and circle the applied lines. Nearby is a solvent, cotton swabs and toothpicks. They remove the flaws that appear during work.
Next, the contour should dry. This takes several days, and you can speed up the process with a regular hair dryer (not a building one). After the contour has dried, we take stained glass paints, pour a little bit into the contour, spread it with brushes, fix it with toothpicks – so that there are no unpainted places inside the contour. After the stained glass paints dry, they become transparent. If you wish, you can add glamor with the help of glitter – sequins.
The mixture of the two described technologies looks very good – painting and stones. One example is in the photo above. The work is painstaking, but it turns out very beautifully.
Beaded mirror edging
In this technique, it will not work to use ready-made drawings – there are a lot of accidents and it is far from always possible to predict the result. But it’s important to have a picture of what you want to see (or a prototype photo) in your head. This work will require transparent glue (the same silicone), multi-colored beads, stones and other decor that you plan to use. You will also need masking tape and brushes, toothpicks.
We stick adhesive tape on the mirror at some distance from the edge. It separates the finish from the rest of the surface. The border does not have to be exactly, it can be of any arbitrary shape. The width of the decorative border is usually not very large, since the wide one looks rough.
We apply silicone to the separated area of u5buXNUMXbthe mirror surface with a snake. At one time we spread a small piece – a strand of XNUMX cm. Quickly distribute the glue over the entire surface. You can do this with a piece from a plastic bottle. We pour beads on a sheet of paper, and from it we scatter over the glue. We straighten with a brush, toothpicks. Don’t use your fingers, it’s hard to clean. We apply glue further, continuing the decoration. As soon as you have gone around everything along the contour, remove the adhesive tape and leave to dry.
Full dry time depends on the silicone, but is usually 72 hours or more. Then nothing will spoil your work, and you can hang it neatly in a day.
A few practical tips. If you want to get diagonally displaced stripes of different colors (as in the photo), apply glue in the same areas. So you get a clearer separation of colors and the work will move faster. If the borders should be blurry – with a smooth transition of color – lay different colors of beads on different pieces of paper, sprinkle it slightly shaking from side to side. Well, immediately after application, you can fix everything with a brush or a toothpick.
Beautiful mirror frame
This method of decorating the mirror has already been described – we take the decor and glue it. But not on the mirror surface itself, but on the frame. The frame can be made from the same piece of fiberboard, or you can buy a mirror in a plastic (for example) frame.
From a mosaic
To create a mosaic, you will need pieces of a mosaic, you can use fragments of ceramics or colored glass, mirrors. You will also need glue (silicone) and ceramic tile grout (can be white, colored).
From fiberboard (cardboard will not work, as the decor will turn out to be heavy), cut out the frame for the mirror, place it in the center, outline the outline. Next, we apply strips of glue to the frame, lay out mosaic tiles or pieces of glass on it.
After everything is laid out and the glue has dried (three days), they take the grout, dilute it to a state of thick sour cream (the proportions are written on the package). This composition fills the gaps between the tiles. When all gaps are filled, the excess is removed with a damp cloth. To prevent the mosaic from looking dull, you need to remove all the grout so that the tiles are clean. And you need to do this before the grout dries.
This mirror decor is perfect for the bathroom. The décor is washable and fits well with the design concept of the bathroom. Such a mirror will look especially decorative if the mosaic is matched to the tone of the tile.