How to Decorate a Mirror
I want to show you how to decorate a mirror and take it from boring to wow!
The first thing you will want to do is print off a beautiful picture that you would like to use. In order for this project to work well, you will need to use laser prints.
For my piece, I went ahead and cut around all of the flowers and got rid of most of the white paper background.
To transfer the image onto a mirror, you are going to need some gel medium. You can use any you’d like. I used a gloss for my project.
Using a very soft-bristled brush, because you don't want to leave any brush strokes, brush the medium all over the image.
Once it is all covered, go ahead and stick it onto the mirror. Make sure to put the image down facing the mirror.
With it in place go ahead and rub it until it is smooth and there are no air bubbles. Let the paper dry completely before moving on.
To separate the paper and remove it from the image, you want to take a damp cloth and dab it until it is moist. You want to just wet the top surface of the paper. Be careful not to put too much water on it.
Begin to lightly rub away the paper once it is damp. As you rub it the pulp will roll up and you can brush it away. Don’t go at it too aggressively or you may tear the image.
This is what it looked like after one pass over my flower. As you can see, it's got a very light white film on it. That means there's still some of the pulp on top of my print so I will need to repeat the process. You may need to wet and rub the pulp away up to 3 times to get a nice clear image left on the mirror.
When all of the pulp is gone and the image is completely dry, the images will be stuck on there. If you want to remove them eventually, you could just use some hot soapy water and a scrubby and it would come away.
I'm really happy with how this worked out. It's quite a different process to put an image transfer onto a mirror. But it does work, and it opens up all sorts of possibilities. I hope you've enjoyed seeing how to decorate a mirror this way.
Resources for this project:
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Very pretty. I'm not sure what is considered laser printed paper.
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Hi Patty
Thank you!
It is a print dome on a laser printer.
Most of us have ink jet printers but your local office depot or staples use laser printers.
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Very lovely!!!
Frequently asked questions
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Can a purchased picture be used for this project? If so, what type wiññ work? Thank you!