Thank you to a lovely reader, who's email reminded me that I needed to do a tutorial for my ceiling tile mirror, so here is it.
I found these ceiling tiles at a huge flea market thing near Dallas called First Mondays. It's HUGE. Booths and booths and aisles and aisles of stuff for sale. Some craft stuff, lots of vintage, anything you can imagine. I found these for $6 a piece, but offered her $5, and she accepted.
I went to Home Depot and picked up some 2x2's, which I think ran me $12 for 4 of them. My tiles were 12x12, so I built an outer frame that was 36x36 (of course, this measurement is going to depend on your tile size). Next, I made a grid on the inside, so that when I nailed in my tiles, I'd have something to attach it to.
Yeah, see that extra piece on the left? That's there because I didn't put the wood in the right place, so the middle left tile didn't have anything to nail it into. No worries, I just added another piece of wood. It's a very forgiving project.
Now, some of my tiles didn't match up exactly. I'll blame that on the tiles, instead of the more likely fact that my outer wood measurement probably wasn't perfect. So when I had it all assembled, you could see the wood in between some of the tiles. With the tile being super distressed, you wouldn't want to just put one color in there, or it'd be super obvious that you're faking it. So I loosely mixed together some similar colors, and dabbed it in the cracks.
And seriously, when it's hanging on the wall, you cannot tell that I had to fudge it. At all.
For the mirror, I just bought a 12 inch mirror from Michaels (don't forget that you can use a competitors coupon!) and some trim from Home Depot. Measure and cut that wood at a 45ยบ angle. Attach with some glue, paint that bad boy, glue on the mirror. I just used wood glue to attach it to the tile, weighed down overnight with my kettlebell and my medicine ball on the corners.
Don't feel like jacking with the trim and the mirror? I did see a square 13 inch mirror at Walmart for under $10. Grab that and slap that on instead.
And here we are! Seriously, it might have been one of the easiest projects I've ever done.
So, yours truly has made it past the first round of Creating With The Stars! Mine ranked 5th out of 12, which I'm happy with. I won't lose any sleep if I don't win the whole thing, but my goal was to make it past the first round. So woot! Mine was the "Tin Tile Mirror", and I'll be doing a tutorial here shortly.
So now we're down to 9 bloggers, and the week's theme is "Knock Off". I think I've found my perfect project, and with encouragement from my blog star Jamielyn of I Heart Naptime, I'm getting started on it today. I have to admit, it's a little daunting. The project is due Saturday night, so one week after the first was due. But, I didn't want to start on a project if I wasn't advancing. Eek. Time to crank this out!
Make sure you're voting! I'll be sure to post and let you know when and where to vote. We aren't allowed to tell you the project that is ours, so it's not a popularity contest (Whew, no more high school anxiety!). The projects are revealed Monday morning, and voting closes out on Tuesday night. Wish me luck!
Holy. Crap. I woke up this morning, expecting it to just be another day of changing diapers and catching up on Project Runway and Nashville. So there I was, scrolling through facebook, and I see a post that says
"Yay! The contestants and their blog stars have been announced! It was such a hard decision- you guys are all so talented! Did YOU make it?"
So, I click on it, vaguely remembering that I entered my plank wall on a whim, never expecting to actually become a finalist.
And out of 361 entries....
Holy. Crap. That is freaking awesome. The other finalists are some tough cookies, but I'm just honored to be chosen. I Heart Naptime is one of my favorite blogs, so I'm super duper excited to get to know Jamielyn better.
I remember following along with the 2012 contest, and holy cow, I'm super excited.
Each week will have a new theme, and the star will give ideas, suggestions and encouragement. The projects will then shown anonymously, so everyone is on a level playing field, which I love.
Make sure you follow along with the fun!
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