A Mirror For Today

My friend Jaye just had her super-fun birthday party at a really cool place called A Work Of Heart. It is a "Creative Arts Lounge", AKA a fully-stocked mixed-media art studio, all set up for classes and groups.

The project we all did was an altered mirror. We started with a plain pine wide-framed Ikea mirror and 32 plain chipboard squares.

First step was to sponge paint the frame. While that was drying, we chose fancy papers, mostly the type you'd use for scrap booking I think. These were cut to size and glued to a bunch of the squares.

The remaining squares were stamped with distressed inks, embossing stuff, and crackle painted and inked in different combinations. We were instructed to paint the edges of the squares at some point, that helps the whole thing look more finished.

Next was the hard part, arranging all the squares in a pleasing arrangement. Looking at this more closely, the hard part truly, for me, was gluing the squares down in straight lines. Is this surprising to anyone? Nope? Good.

Finally we got to choose embellishments to glue on top of the squares. There was a huge assortment of all kinds of things, letters, buttons, charms, jewelry bits, ribbons, rhinestones,etc. It was hard to narrow it down and choose and not put too much "stuff" on top of the squares I'd worked so hard on. Luckily I was sitting next to Bron (she of the fabulous button stash), who had brought a nice selection of tiny Chinese coins, buttons and those cool yellow leafy feathers that I ended up using. Thanks again Bron!

It was so fun to get to:

• Hang out with Jaye and all her friends, lots of whom are mutual friends, the laughter, camraderie and talking was a high point for me
• Make art with a completely new set of materials
• Use supplies I hadn't ever tried
• Try a type of project I hadn't done before
• Check out what everyone else came up with, they were all so different in the end!