The mirror makeover

Before and after (ignore white sheet reflection...
it's hard to take photos of mirrors!

Many beautiful dressers out there are missing their mirrors, and vice versa. The reason? It's an outdated look so they were removed for aesthetic reasons. So we're finding these poor, lost mirrors and have found they make great mantel mirrors due to their sheer size and weight. They often have a nice shape and are made of nice solid woods, not veneers that might be chipped or peeling away from the frame. So if you need a nice mantel piece or you want a large mirror in the bedroom - not necessarily over the dresser but an accent piece above your headboard - or even in the bathroom, these mirrors are perfect.
Duna & Gertie found that you can paint on the mirror surface with an enamel paint but in order to keep it from peeling, the glass needs to be prepped. We bought a glass etching kit which was more or less a paint that dried to look like the glass was sandblasted. Waste of money, as you could barely see the etching, however the glass conditioner to prep the glass turned out to be a real saviour for our mirrors.

The mirror was completely covered in painter's tape. Then, a freehand drawing in black marker ran around the edge of the mirror. It's nice to be able do it this way because if you make a mistake, peel the tape, cover that spot again and continue until you get the art you like. Use a stencil, or hand cut your own as we did.
After using a very sharp exacto knife to cut out the drawn outline, the image was removed to reveal the glass. It's here that we used the glass conditioner with a Q-tip to condition the glass to take the spray enamel. This is where it gets tricky. Once you spray paint the image carefully with light even coats, you have to start removing the tape carefully while it's wet to make sure it doesn't peel off from the mirror. But it's worth the effort as you get nice clean lines in your image.

We loved the shape of this mirror,
our bird and vine motif is hand-drawn
so each piece is a one-of-a-kind!