Making a Venetian Mirror in Miniature

This project was not at all what I expected to be working on yesterday. But once the idea was in my head, it just wouldn't leave me alone until I gave it a try. 

The only mirror I had to play with was a package of 1/2" mirrored tiles, so my mirror experiments had to stay quire small. I bought them for a project, but never used them because they weren't as precisely cut as I'd hoped. They've been sitting in a drawer ever since, waiting for inspiration. The silver/mirrored paper on the right I found the last time I was at the craft store. It isn't a true mirror, since the paper's texture distorts and blurs the images, but it was close enough for this project.

 It just took me a while to figure out the best way...

 

 

(1st attempt on left, final attempt on right)

The first mirror I tried, I used masking tape and a few tiny punches to create stencils, which I then stenciled using white paint. The result didn't look quite right, but it was close enough to be encouraging.

For the second mirror, I remembered some brass stencils I'd bought years ago. I used the smallest parts of the designs to stencil leaves and flowers on the mirrored paper. The look was better, but the white paint still felt a bit heavy.  I also hated the shape of this frame.

 

For the third frame, I tried something new.  Rather than stenciling the design, I etched a freehand design into the paper with the pointed tips of my tweezers. This gave the lighter look that the first two were missing. But without the white paint, the mirrored paper started to look like metal, rather than mirror. I used a tiny bit of watered down white paint to fill in the designs, which helped a lot.

I still want to do a bit more experimenting, so I'll hold off posting step by step instructions for a little while.