Sometimes art and the price that art charges make no sense. While we can all look at a painting by Michelangelo and marvel at its brilliance and understand that based on the level of skill involved and how old it is, it must be worth millions of dollars. Yet with modern art, there can sometimes be a splash of paint on a white canvas from a man that lives down the road and he is charging millions as well. This does not make sense. When it comes closer to home and when you are shopping for items for your own house some items from high-end boutiques cost so much and yet look so ugly. Some other items look so good and are just so cheap. Yet there are some items that cost almost nothing to make and look like they came from the closest art gallery. This is one of those items.
When you are decorating your home the bills can start to rack up quickly. A new lounge suite could set you back thousands of dollars and the rest of the furniture won’t be cheap either. You need to cut corners in clever ways. Well, we have the mirror covered.
Take a look at the mirror we have created and ask yourself how much you would pay for it in a shop. It looks like the height of fashion and we have no doubt it would cost a lot of money, that is if it wasn’t made of plastic spoons! That’s right this mirror is incredibly cheap, easy to make, and a delight to walk past every day. To make this incredible piece you will need 250 plastic spoons (no, I wasn’t kidding), some string, foamboard, a small mirror (six to ten inches), hot glue gun, scissors and spray paint.
Start by finding a round object in your home and tracing a circle on the foam board so that it is about 18 inches in diameter. If you can’t find a round object don’t forget the pencil and string technique that you learned in your early years of school, it will work perfectly here. Then place your mirror inside the circle and trace around it, remove the mirror and you should have two circles traced on the foamboard, one inside the other.
Take your plastic spoons and cut off all the handles, for this project we will only need the heads. Try to cut the heads so they are all roughly the same size but don’t worry too much about the cuts being pretty, they won’t be visible in the final product.
Simply apply some glue to the back of the spoon and stick it to the foam board. Start at the edge of the small circle and work your way out. You should place each concentric circle of spoons in a concentric pattern so that the spoon of an outer circle fits between the spoons of an inner circle.
Take your favorite spray paint and spray all of the spoon heads. We used black but found that metallic would also work well. To be honest any color would work as if you paint these spoons yellow, red, green, or blue they could really make a room pop. In fact, you could use a number of colors if it is for a child’s room. Set aside to allow the paint and glue to dry.
Once finished drying simply take your hot gun and glue some string to the back so that you can hang your mirror. Hang the mirror somewhere in the house where lots of people can see it and marvel at how they think the mirror cost you a bomb. Revealing that this mirror is just a bunch of plastic spoons is a little like a magician revealing his tricks. You can do it thinking they will be more impressed but often that just makes the magic disappear. Sometimes the magic is best kept hidden.
