I saw a You Tube Video on how to make a Christmas Tree from a broken mirror. In the video, they took broken mirror shards, and placed them on a piece of plywood to form a Christmas tree. They then glued the mirror pieces to the plywood and filled in all the spaces with grout. Of course, they made it seem very easy.
As you can imagine, the project was not as easy as it looked. To be fair, there were three people working on it in the video and I was a team of one. Am I glad I tried? Would I do it again? The answers are yes, yes. The one thing I would change is doing it alone. Next time I will ask a friend to do it with me!
First, you need a mirror. I bought this one at Walmart for seven dollars.
Then I got to smash it. I am not going to lie, it was fun!
When I finished breaking the mirror, I took the pieces and separated them into small, medium and large groupings.
I used quarter inch plywood I found in my garage as my base and used 1 x 2’s around the edges and across the back to strengthen it.
To adhere the mirror to the board, I used LOCTITE PL 530 mirror, marble and granite adhesive.
It was difficult to put the adhesive on and keep track of the original design. This is where an extra person would have helped.
I used a shish cabob stick to clean up any excess adhesive.
It took a while to get the pieces into a design I liked.
While gluing on the shards some of the adhesive got on the outside. I used Windex to get it off.
The next step, was to fill in all the empty space between the mirror pieces with grout.
I will admit, I do not fully read directions. I based my calculations on the video I saw. It said to use half the bag of grout and a quart of water.
The grout was very soupy, probably the result of not reading the directions. Since all grout is not the same and the bag on You Tube could have been a different brand, smaller bag etc.
Because of the consistency, it was not setting like it should. I used a wet sponge to take off the excess grout. It made quite the mess. I was really glad no one was home to witness my debacle.
I wiped it down until I could see the mirror pieces. Then let it dry an additional twenty minutes.
After it was set, I wiped off the grout from the mirrored pieces.
The finished broken mirror tree. I added a bow on top to make it look more like a Christmas Tree.
I am really enjoying sharing all the Christmas projects with you. What projects have you been working on? Leave a comment and tell me about your projects. I would love to hear about them!
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