By: Sandra Blackwell, Artistic Guide

My sister-out-law is a fellow creative spirit.  She makes incredibly fabulous pictoral art quilts, and we occasionally ride bikes together.  She has been redecorating her bedroom - painting, new floor, new bed, etc.  She wants to put new art on the walls as well, and had seen a bold poppy print at a thrift store, but it was rather expensive, especially for a thrift store.  This mirror isn’t nearly as big as the print, but I thought it would look nice on one of her newly painted walls. 

Supplies:
Stamps:
Butterfly (Inkadinkadoo clear stamp)
Alphabet (Clearly Wordsworth)
Vine (Inkadinkadoo clear stamp)
Small flower (Inkadinkadoo clear stamp)
 Paper:
Decorator napkin 
Ink:
Versafine black
Silver pigment (colorbox)
Light blue pigment (colorbox) 
Other:
Wood framed mirror (Ikea-Malma) You could use any other wide wood frame, or just a board
Craft acrylic paint
Mod podge
Paint brush 

Directions: 

1. The Malma Mirrors from Ikea come in colors, or plain wood. I started with a plain wood one, as I wanted the base color to be raspberry.  I mixed some craft acrylic paint till I got the right color.  I painted a fairly thick coat that covered the wood grain. 




2. As the paint was drying, I fussy cut the poppies from a decorator napkin.  The napkin was 2 ply, so I removed the back, leaving just the printed image. After deciding on where I wanted the flowers, I applied them with a coat of Mod Podge under the napkin, and another coat on top.  I let that dry as well. 




3. I then  started to stamp a vine picture randomly over the rest of the mirror. I didn’t like that.  I sprayed the vine images with rubbing alcohol, and wiped it off with a towel.  This took some of the paint off as well.  I decided I really liked that look better, so left the distressed look rather than repainting.  I love it when stuff like that happens by accident. 




4. The rest of the mirror still needed something else, so I picked the butterfly stamp and stamped 3 images using versafine black ink. I filled in some corners using a small vine using a silvery blue pigment from colorbox, stamping in a random pattern.  I put 3 small flowers in silver pigment after each butterfly, leaving a trail.



5. I still had a large space at the bottom that needed to be filled.  I wanted a word or something more graphic.  I tried a Love stamp, but it was too small, and too curly for what I wanted, so I removed it with the alcohol.  This left a very bare spot, so I did reapply a small amount of paint and smeared it around thinly with my finger. 
6. I ended up stamping “Kiss Me” on silver cardstock, and cut the letters out.  I adhered them to the frame with mod podge as well. 
7. That is what I was looking for!