Who's The Fairest of them All?

As there's still very little occurring with crafting in my life at the moment, I thought I'd post about something I did ages ago, but am still quite pleased with... My mirror.

Sounds exciting, no? *laughs*

When I moved into my flat, my parents gave me their old, pine framed mirror, as they'd just replaced it. Not being a huge fan of pine, I painted it the same colour as my walls, to give my tiny flat the illusion of a bit more space.

A little while later this was beginning to bore me. Plus, I'd just bought some awesome (to me at least!) black and silver zebra print cushions. So I decided to make my mirror a little jazzier...

I freehanded the stripes, which matched the colour scheme of the living room. Actually, the colours in this photo are a bit rubbish, the stripes are a teal that's almost black in places (depending on how many coats I'd done on that bit).

Fastforward a bit further and my decor had changed again (I get bored easily *smiles*). This time, to a sort of steampunk type thing. Nothing too dramatic, I think I referred to it as steampunk-lite in a previous post. I'm slowly gathering all sorts of different items to fit into the new theme; globes, antique books, opera goggles, an antique typewriter and so on. I love it (may do a post to show you around at some point). But the mirror didn't work any more. Well, it worked in as much as it continued to function as a mirror, but you know what I mean *chuckles*

Mum came up with the great suggestion to repaint the frame to look like rusted metal (my mum has excellent design ideas - she doesn't tend to have any suggestions on how to make them work, but if you manage to figure that bit out, they're always pretty cool!)

Another not very good picture of the outcome (this was before I started paying attention to how to take decent pictures!)

I didn't take any pictures during the process, so no tutorial, but here's what I did:

• Painted the whole frame in the black/teal paint that I'd used for the stripes (partly because I thought it would make a pretty good base, and partly to avoid having any zebra striping coming through the next layers)
• Waited impatiently for it to dry, holding in the urge to poke it to check ;)
• Using a wide brush, painted some sections with a gold paint (enamel I think) and others with a bronzey colour, throwing in a tiny little bit of copper as well
• Tried, mostly successfully, to blend the edges
• Repeated the process a few times, on smaller sections, to build up the colours
• While the rest of the paint was still wet, used a small brush to add some red and green paint
• Used a sponge to blend the reds and greens into the rest, and add some texture
• Waited, even more impatiently this time, for the paint to be mostly dry
• Used a sponge to overlay some copper onto the rest of the paint, in a splotchy (yep, that's the technical term) sort of way
• Stood back and admired my handiwork *grins*

I love how it turned out. Some of the red paint was starting to solidify in the tin, which gave those areas a really rough texture. You can't see any red or green, but they really made a difference to the depth of the look.

So, even though it is very hard to make wood look like metal, I think it works really well...

Finally, a picture that actually looks like it is supposed to ;)