Ever since Janell made her ingeniously wonderful sunburst mirror I’ve wanted to make my own out of something unexpected.

First you need a very high tech template. {Did you think I was gonna tell you to use paper towels to make it?} I folded 3 continuous half sheets of paper towel in half and cut a pointy shape.  Folding it in half ensures your ray {shall we call them rays?} is uniform on both sides.  No measuring whatsoever.

Then, I cut up about 4 sheets of poster board into strips and folded them in half.  Yep, it’s poster board. And the folding makes it easier to cut and adds dimension to the finished mirror, I love it with slothfulness and design work together like that.  I just put the folded template over the folded poster board and cut away until I had a pile of rays.

Helpful Hint: I found thin poster board for .59 cents a sheet from True Value.  It seemed like cheaper poster board but, I liked it because both sides were identical, not one side shiny, one side matte, if your poster board has two different sides, make sure you cut everything using the same side.

Another Helpful Hint: I found that the grain of the poster board affects how easy it is to fold, one way I got a clean fold, but if I made a fold perpendicular, the fold turned out all weird and not as clean. Test out your poster board to see if it has a direction that folds easier.


Originally, I thought I would use a larger mirror I had sitting around.  I tucked each ray under the mirror to see how I liked it.  Unfortunately, it seemed like it was going to look like a flower which was exactly what I didn’t want “Oh, I love your sunflower mirror, it’s so um, summery…”.   But, this is the fun part where you can play around with arrangements and layout and see what works best for your size mirror.

I’m not sure that there is such a thing as too many rays.  Layering a few different sizes helps break up the poster board and add interest.   I even tried painting the mirror to see if it looked less flowerlike.  Nope.  There is something about the balance of the size of the mirror with the rays that you want to pay attention to.   I’m more drawn to a smaller mirror and larger rays. Luckily, I happened to find a darling little convex mirror for $20 at a local shop.

Ahhh, that’s better.  This is the stage where I was just playing with the layout on the table, nothing is attached yet.  Working in sets of four rays is the secret to keeping everything in order.  Then you put each set in a north, south, east, west position for each layer.

Time to start hot gluing.  First I drew some lines on the back, just your basic north, south east west going a few different ways.  Start with your smallest rays first and remember to work in fours.

And layer and glue and work in fours and layer and glue and work in fours.  Until it’s all done.  It only takes about 5 minutes of hot gluing, such a rewarding little project.


And you have a pretty, layered, dimensional, fun mirror for less than $25.

*Updated

How to Make a sunburst mirror

We’ve been using the posterboard mirror for a year and a half and Better Homes and Gardens Do It Yourself Magazine was here last month and photographed it for their February issue.  The mirror still looks great (I’m more surprised than anyone) and I still love it!

DIY sunburst mirror