I know I’m a little late on the sunburst mirror trend, but when I saw one I could make myself, I couldn’t resist! We really needed a large piece of art on one of the bare walls at the beach house, so we decided a sunburst mirror would do the trick.
We started with 2 packs of wood shims from Lowes. I chose the bundles that had some rough looking pieces since I was going for the beachy, weathered wood look.
Next, I cut a cardboard circle to serve as the structure to attach the shims to. Of course I failed to measure, but I think the circle was about 15″ in diameter. Then we placed a few shims around the circle to determine our spacing and how many we would need. Once we had a plan, we started painting.
I chose 5 shades of acrylic paint I happened to already have and that matched the throw pillows in the same room. I watered down the paint by at least 50% and lightly “washed” each shim in color, using a cloth to wipe off the excess paint.
After the shims dried for a few hours, I determined the loose pattern I wanted to work with and placed the first layer of shims around the cardboard circle. I then fired up the hot glue gum and began carefully lifting each piece, adding the glue and then firmly placing it back down in it’s spot. Repeat until the first layer is attached.
The next step is placing the second layers of shims which are attached to the first layer but inset several inches. It’s important to know the size of the mirror you want to place in the center so you will know how many inches to offset your second layer so that the mirror will cover the empty center. Once I had that measurement, I placed the second layer and then picked up each piece and hot-glued as before.
Once all the shims were in place, I added a bead of hot glue around the inner edge of the second layer of shims and attached the mirror. I bought an 8″ diameter mirror at Hobby Lobby and it has a nice beveled edge. You can find it here.
I forgot to take a picture of the back of the mirror before I hung it on the wall, but I used a picture frame bracket like this one and staple-gunned it through the cardboard to the back of a shim so it would hold.
Voila…here is the completed wood shim sunburst mirror! What you do you think?
