9.02.2011

HACKING A SUNBURST MIRROR





































Earlier in the summer I found a dusty old sunburst clock at an estate sale. I grabbed it so that I could transform it to the sunburst mirror I always wanted. It was the best $2 I ever spent at an estate sale.

Here's the original sunburst clock.


























I couldn't wait to take off the ugly clock face. But when I dismantled it I ran into a couple problems.


























Originally I thought I was going take off the hands of the clock and the little knob that holds them and simply glue a mirror on top of the clock face. But when I unscrewed the hands, the clock and the battery pack behind it all came loose as well. This called for a Plan B. How was I going to glue the mirror onto the space where the clock used to be? Additionally, how was I going to hang up this thing since the hook for hanging the clock was attached to the battery pack?


























For the mirror solution, I first cut a few pieces of craft foam into circles. I ended up only needing to glue two of them together to fill in the space in the centre. 


























For the hanging solution, I used some picture hanging wire I had on hand and tied it to the back like so.


























Then I glued on top of the foam circles the mirror I hacked together using a 7 in. round mirror and a 7 in. wooden embroidery hoop that I painted gold. And voila!

sunburst mirror


























It's everything I hoped it would be.

There are lots of instructions out there for how to make a sunburst mirror from scratch. This one and this one are two pretty good tutorials.

DIY sunburst mirror

This sunburst mirror has one little imperfection. Bonus points to the first one who can point it out. 

2 comments:

  1. It's missing the gold thingy at the 6 o'clock position. I only know this because I slept beneath it for several nights! Ha!

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