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A Mirror Makeover for Jimmy Buffett Fans.

Hometalk 11/10/2022

This yard sale mirror has so many possibilities. Wait until you see what I decided to do.

Let’s get started…

a mirror makeover for jimmy buffett fans

What a great find at such a good price. This piece is well made and substantial.

It’s best to take the mirror apart before you start painting. The reason is you want to be sure to paint the wood that is facing the mirror. You don’t want the mirror to reflect back the original color of the wood.

The back comes off and now I can remove the mirror.

Surprisingly the frame itself was in pieces. I’ll just glue it back together later on.

I’m going to paint the frame white. I don’t want the wood to bleed through so I gave it a coat of polyurethane.

I’ve been making Jimmy Buffett signs because here at the beach we have a parrot head nonprofit organization and a lot of Jimmy Buffett fans. So I decided to make this a Jimmy Buffett mirror. I found the lyrics and music to one of his songs and printed it off from my computer. I’m going to decoupage the mirror! Using a small wet brush, I made random lines around the paper.

Then I can pull apart odd shaped pieces to decoupage.

I worked in sections. I applied the medium and then added the paper. I used plastic wrap and paper towel to smooth out the wrinkles.

Once the entire frame was done I let it dry thoroughly. Then I used a fine grit sanding block to lightly knock off any wrinkles and loose paper.

Since I curled some of the paper around the edge I used rougher sandpaper to make sure everything was nice and flat. I needed to make sure that once I replaced the mirror it would fit nice and snug. I didn’t want any bumps to give me problems.

Using wood glue I glued all the pieces together. When I took the mirror apart in the beginning, I numbered each piece. This way I was sure to get it put back together properly.

Then I took wood putty and smoothed it over each connecting piece on the back side. I used clamps to hold things in place and let everything dry. . Once again I sanded it once it dried completely.

To finish it off I glued another piece of lyric paper on the front over the each area where the frame connected.

I decided that I didn’t like it black and white. So I took a piece of lyric paper and mod podged it. Once it dried I added three different colors to see what I might like. I decided to go with the dark wax color which is brown.

To prepare the frame for the dark wax I put a Polycrylic finish on it. When using a chalk paint product it’s best to go over with some kind of clear finish first. Then when you apply the paint, which in this case is dark wax, you can pull it back with a paper towel. I’ll show you what I mean.

Here I applied the dark wax with the sponge brush. It’s much darker than I want.

To get the lighter tone I simply used dry paper towel to rub over it and pull some off.

I really like how this looks like aged vintage paper.

I was concerned that this backside inside lip would reflect back on the mirror. I didn’t paint it white like I originally intended. Because I went with the dark wax color I decided to just paint the lip brown.

It was quick and easy.

Now it gets a final coat or two of polycrylic to seal everything.

I popped the mirror back in and then added the back. I had all the original screw holes as a guide.

And I saved all the original screws.

My drill helped me get it all put back solidly including the hanging system.

And there you have it. I never know how to best take a picture of a mirror. I hope you can see how wonderful this turned out.

It took a few days to complete this project but the end result was worth the effort. Check out this close up. I’m so happy I decided to add the dark wax color.

Did you like this tutorial? I have two more mirrors to up cycle. I can’t wait to show you.

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