What’s the message you hear when you look in the mirror? On this mirror, (which happened to start out as a mirror discarded on the curb, free for the taking) the message is clearly not the famous words of an insecure Queen, mentally caught in a competition to be the fairest of them all, but instead the message in the mirror is a Bible verse, reminding us what is so much more important than our outward appearance. The verse I chose is packed full of truth, reminding us that we are created by God, just the way He intended us to be, (brown eyes, blue eyes, tall, short, whatever… we are God’s handiwork!) and we are created not to bemoan or focus on if we’re prettier than someone else, and not to pick apart the elements on our face or body… but we are created for such a more deeper reason… “for good works”!
This summer, I found this mirror on the side of the road as we were driving back to the cottage from a visit to Nubble Light. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I kind of love lighthouses, so any excuse to share a picture of one with you, I’ll jump on! So…
here is Nubble Light. It’s a lighthouse that sits on an island very close to the mainland, just off the coast by York, Maine. Pretty, isn’t it? Someday I’ll have to share with you more about Nubble Light, but today I’m talking about the mirror with a message. 🙂
Like I so frequently do, I failed to take a before picture of this freebie. You’ll need to use your imagination… Try to see it with a dark mahogany stain covered with a shiny lacquer finish, and fruit decals on the corners!
After lightly sanding the wooden frame, to dull the shiny lacquer and smooth the painted decals, I painted a couple coats of light blue paint on it. (I used the paint with primer in it, so I could do both priming and base paint in one step)
As I was working on the mirror, I was working hard on trying to visualize how I wanted the finished product to be. Instead, I just kept adding one element to the design after another, until I finally liked the end result. (no worries… if something didn’t look right, I could always re-coat and start over… no stress)
Once the light blue base color was finished and dried, I decided it was too pale, so next I watered down, (about 50/50 paint and water) some navy blue paint and lightly coated that on, being careful to mind the brush strokes creating a washed out grain look on the frame. I liked that watery look. (I repeated this same effect on one of the directional arrows sign I made too… the one for the beach)
I should mention that I intended to hang this mirror in the kid’s room of the cottage, so keeping the overall paint scheme on it nautical, was A-OK, but as we have both granddaughters and grandsons that use that little bedroom, gender neutral was important. Stripes are so wonderfully nautical, so I started by adding some yellow ones to the outside trim on top and bottom of the mirror frame.
This is a cheapo mirror… nothing antique or precious about it. It’s just a cheap imitation of a traditional broken pediment style mirror, so I didn’t feel bad about covering it with paint and just creating a bit of a zany styled frame for our grandchildren to enjoy in their room while visiting.
Once the yellow stripes were done, I realized it needed more…
after adding orange and green on some of the details, I wasn’t totally pleased with that color combination…
Deciding it was the shade of green that wasn’t pleasing to my eye, I tweaked it a bit by washing over the green with a blueish green paint, leaving some of the base green to show through, but changed the feel of the color to more of a teal shade and creating a watery effect, which looked nice, repeating the watery effect on the main part of the frame…
Then I decided the yellow stripes needed a bit more definition, so I outlined them with my black paint marker. Wow, what a difference that made!
Once the painting was done, I let the paint dry for a bit and worked on the verse on my computer. Even though it’s a simple verse to write, and I didn’t do any special font, I find it so helpful to visualize it and prevent spelling errors on the actual piece if I write it out on Powerpoint first. (I usually do that when I’m working on the chalkboard too!) It’s so easy to focus on the lettering and spacing, that I totally mess us the spelling. So having a pattern to look at really helps.
Just using my computer screen to see the pattern, not needing to actually print it out, I penciled on the mirror frame first, then with a paint marker, and highlighted a little with a silver paint marker over the top of that, I wrote out the verse on the inside edge of the mirror frame.
My hope is when my precious grandchildren look in their mirror to fix their hair or whatever, they will hear this message in the mirror, reminding them of how truly special they are, and that there are way bigger things waiting for them to do besides just thinking about the way they look.
I hope this post has inspired you to be creative and have fun painting a piece of furniture or accessory piece… If you don’t like part of it, just tweak it until you do. No stress… just enjoy it and have fun!
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