The Big Mirror

We had our bedroom decorated 16 months ago and I have finally finished the mirror frame for my big leaner mirror to go in the room. I bought a (quite frankly nasty) cheap fake leather framed mirror off eBay which I naively thought would finish off the room perfectly. Not only was it nasty and cheap looking, the bits of vinyl started peeling off the frame almost immediately and it wasn't long before I got angry and ripped them all off.

A friend of mine has been using comics to rejuvenate pieces of furniture and this gave me an idea.  Last November, I sold the smaller version of my big plan at the school Christmas Fair, when I covered 6x4 photo frames in comics and also salt dough tree decorations. I bought the comics off eBay for 99p each and they are original 1950's Marvel comics.

So, back to the mirror, which needed a lot of tlc because it was looking very sad. I stripped it down, taking off the layers of padding and sticky strips of glue encrusted vinyl to leave a bare, moulded fibreboard frame.

I took the mirror out of the frame and covered the whole thing in a layer of brown paper and pva glue to give a smooth layer to stick the comics to. Once that was all dry, I started methodically tearing the best images from each page of my comic selection (Fantastic 4, X-men, Hulk and Avengers) and mixed them all up before starting to glue the pieces down. All the less interesting ripped pieces were used to fill small gaps so nothing was wasted.

Each time I glued a piece on, I coated it with another layer of glue, so the whole thing is sealed in and has a slight sheen to it but the colour of the comics is not affected by any addition of varnish.

The mirror is now proudly in it's place in the bedroom and I am so in love with it!