Sunburst Mirror DIY

Over the past few months, I’ve developed an unhealthy obsession with sunburst mirrors. I’ve been wanting one for our home for a while, but my biggest challenge was finding one that was affordable! Apparently I was not the only person having a love affair with these gorgeous mirrors because every store I went to was trying to sell these babies for several hundred dollars each…

After much hunting, I found one from Bed Bath & Beyond, and forty bucks later it was mine… all mine!
Sunburst Mirror
The problem?? The god awful fake patina finish. Unfortunately, I got a bit too excited in the moment, and I forgot to take a “before” picture, so it’s hard to see in this stock picture I pulled from their site. Trust me when I say that it had a cheesy “Olive Garden faux finish” – not that there is anything wrong with the Olive Garden… just saying.

The easy fix? Paint it! A quick trip to Michaels, and a few materials later, I was ready to refinish. Here is what you will need:

– Martha Stewart liquid gilding paint (I got both the brass gold and silver to mix)
– Small foam brush
– Newspaper (or in my case grocery bags)
– Small container to mix – use something you don’t mind throwing away; that way, keep clean up is easy

Anyways, this is a super simple project – I think it took me only one hour from start to finish.

I poured the paints into my little plastic container and after mixing them up, just started dabbing it on (Don’t judge, my disposable container I used was the plastic packaging the paint came in… it worked!) Because the patina’ed rays of the sunburst were slick (covered in some sort of plastic to protect the precious finish I suppose), I found that dabbing the paint as it started to get tacky gave the most even coverage, and resulted in a perfectly imperfect surface. Keep in mind, I was not going for perfection here – I really wanted the surface to resemble something that had been left out in the shed over the winter.

The pictures below show one coat so you can still see a touch of the streaky dark patina still peeking through.

Keep in mind that the Martha Stewart liquid gilding paint dries fast… REALLY fast. It says it takes an hour to fully dry, but it’s definitely dry to the touch within 30 minutes or so.

Overall I’m really happy with how this quick mirror makeover turned out, and I’m so excited to hang it up!