A mirror for a wanderer

I'm aiming to make quite a few handmade christmas presents this year and one of the things I'm trying is jumping on the bandwagon of decorating Ikea mirror frames. I've seen so many people using them to make some fabulous art and they're an absolute bargain at £1.25 each!

I have various ideas for what to do with the 6 I ended up buying. For the first one I was inspired by an article in this months Craft Stamper magazine where they used reinkers and craft glue to make a fantastic collaged mirror frame. Quite a few papers from my Tim Holtz paper stashes are travel related, so I thought I could do something similar on a travel theme for a globetrotting friend. However, what I ended up with was a much simpler piece than I originally planned...

I started off with a single sheet of map design paper from Tim's Lost and Found paper stash. I cut out the two halves of the globe to use as the main images and used the reverse of the leftover paper to make the background. I edged all the bits in vintage photo and stamped some splatters round the edges of the background pieces.

The mirror frame edges were stained with walnut stain distress stain.

Somehow, I managed to trim the papers so there was a hole in the right place for the mirror, then I glued down the images with matt multi medium.

Using vintage photo distress ink again, I stamped the birds at the top and used a a Tim Holtz mask to create the compass at the bottom, adding the game spinner as a compass pointer.

The strap down one side was made with grunge paper, stained with walnut stain and vintage photo, embossed with a texture fade and highlighted with black soot distress ink and some coppery rub on. I then gave it a coat of multi-medium. Hopefully it looks a bit like leather. The studs are the tops of some brads glued on. The word in the book plate came from the same sheet of paper as the rest of the design.

The final detail was the phrase at the bottom, which I think was perfect for theme of this piece - I used a left over scrap of paper, stamped in vintage photo and clear embossed.

So thats my Holtzian travel mirror and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.

Thanks for reading, I hope you like this as much as I do :0)

Sarah
xx