$10 - Paint Stick Mirror

Over the weekend B went on a shed hunting trip with his friend Bodey so I decided to go on a crafting frenzy Friday night through Saturday morning. Here is one of the projects I made!

Total side note - me and my cute friend Jacee (who is Bodey's fiance) went to dinner and saw the movie The Loft Saturday night. Can I just say WHAT THE HECK! Dinner was great, we ate at Rumbi Grill, but the movie was so weird. It was -okay- and definitely entertaining don't get me wrong, but it was so strange. Kind of like going to Gone Girl without reading the books.. We both left the movie and were like um... what? Haha!

I purchased this circular mirror, which is about 8" in circumference, from Michaels Crafts for $3. I had a box lying around that I used to cut into two same size circles. I hot glued the two cardboard circles together to use as my base. I decided to use two because it was a little bit sturdier, but totally up to you! 

I got 50 paint sticks for FREE from my local Walmart. I went to Home Depot first to get them, but they wanted to charge me  $0.20 a stick which was stupid because everywhere else gives them out free. Walmart did not care at all, they even helped me count them out and put them in a bag for me haha! I laid them out on butcher paper, purchased at the dollar store, in my garage. 

I than sprayed one coat of this Rust-Oleum Metallic gold spray paint and let them dry for about 15 minutes. I grabbed one stick to do a tester sample to see if I wanted to do 1 or two coats. After seeing the sample stick dry I decided to go with two coats. I sprayed the second coat and let them dry for about 15 more minutes. The sun was directly on mine which made them dry so fast!

I counted out 25 sticks (1/2 of what I have) and took a heavy duty scissor and cut right before the handle grooves. Which I'll be honest - totally sucked!! I highly recommend using like a electric saw to cut these. Scissors suck even if the wood is super thin!

I set out the 25 longer sticks evenly spaced apart with grooves in the center on the very edges of the cardboard base. I than picked them up one at a time and started hot gluing them onto the cardboard. 

Once they were all glued on I went around and filled in any gaps with hot glue. I did this to make sure everything was securely on the cardboard. 

Once that hot glue had dried I went and laid out my shorter sticks on top of the long sticks. Once they were all laid out how I wanted them to be I would put some hot glue on the end of the stick and push it down to the card board. I wanted my shorter sticks to kind of stick out to give it dimension so while pushing the inside down I held the outside above the long sticks about a finger in width. Once all of the shorter sticks were done I went through and filled in any gaps with hot glue, just like the long stick layer. I let that sit for a few minutes to dry and than glued the mirror on the top of the sick layers.

This mirror was relatively easy to make and will look so cute hung up in my house! All together with supplies it costed $10 - CRAZY CHEAP and CUTE!

Paint Sticks - FREE

Mirror - $3

Cardboard - FREE

Spray paint - Mine was about $4

Butcher paper - $1

Hot glue sticks - $2 worth

If you recreat this mirror for yourself please tag it #MakeItLively - Thanks!

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