As a lover of mid-century modern design, I’ve always wanted a starburst mirror. I remember watching design shows and thinking, “I bet I could make that.” So I did—about 15 years later.

Materials

The first step is to gather your materials. Most of what you need can be found at Michaels, or any craft store.

What I used:

Hot Glue
E600 Glue
2 predrilled wooden circles (12” in diameter)
1 Mirror (also 12” in diameter)
1 gold decorative/candle plate (13” in diameter
Many (many many) wooden skewers
Gold spraypaint
4 screws
1 Phillips screwdriver
Heat gun (optional)
Wood print decorative shelf lining (optional)

What Not to Do

The thing about wood is: it warps. I usually use a cardboard box for my spray painting, because it keeps everything contained and off my furniture. I had fully intended to place my skewers into my cardboard box, spray them, flip them, and repeat. I was very unsuccessful. Some of the skewers (no matter how hard I tried) would not be flipped as the warping would cause them to roll back to the already painted side.

I tried a few things, like shaking the box and allowing the surrounding skewers to hold the warped ones in place. Much to my great chagrin, I just ended up exhausting two cans of gold spray paint.

Don’t use this method to paint your skewers. Affix them to the wooden base first, it’ll save you time and money.

Create Your Layout

There are many different styles of starburst mirrors; some have varying lengths to their bursts, some are all the same length, some have smaller mirrors on the ends. Before you begin glueing, lay play with the layout of your burst. Try a few designs until you find one that works for you. I decided to vary the lengths of my skewers to really create that starburst look.

Use a Pie Chart as a Guide

This is an optional step and will only work if you have a printer. Once you’ve decided on your skewer arrangement, it’s time to do a teensie bit of math—your computer will do the rest. While this is optional, it can help keep the layout uniform. If you have a good eye for symmetry, or you you don’t have a printer, feel free to move on to the next step.

Making a guide:

Start by counting the skewers in your layout.
Open Excel, Google docs, or Numbers on your computer
Add a line for every one of your skewers and highlight them all
Select the Chart option from the toolbar and select insert pie chart.
Make sure your pie chart is a good size (just smaller than your wooden base) and print it.
Tape your pie chart onto the middle of your wooden base—make sure you leave room to glue on your skewers.
Congratulations! You’ve just made a guide for your starburst.

Begin Glueing

If you have a stencil, start glueing along the lines of your pie chart. If not, place your skewers evenly along the wooden base and begin glueing.

Start with small dabs of glue so you can make changes along the way. Use just enough to affix the skewers to the base. If you add too much glue, you can’t modify the design without snapping your skewers. This is important because it allows you to fix mistakes or change your design.

I ended up buying more skewers of varying sizes to add a little more dimension to my starburst. Had I added too much glue, I wouldn’t have been able to make the major changes.

Spray Paint the Skewers

Before reinforcing your base, lay out some newspaper or paper recycling and spray the skewers. Let them dry, flip over the base and repeat.

Keep some acetone (or nail polish remover with acetone) in case you accidentally spray other surfaces. If you do accidentally get some spray paint on a countertop or table, apply some acetone to a cotton ball, rub the paint until it is gone, and quickly clean the surface. Acetone will eat through layers of sealant, so be cautious when applying it onto tables. Clean the surface immediately after removing the paint to avoid causing damage to the layers beneath.

Bring in the Reinforcements

Once you’ve finished making changes, place the second wooden base over the skewers so they’re sandwiched between the two. Glue it in place—I used a combination of the E600 glue and the hot glue. This keeps the skewers from coming lose and falling and creates a strong base for you starburst.

Here you can also screw the wooden bases together for more reinforcement, but you don’t have to. That step will be done officially, later.

Next, center the wooden bases on the golden candle plate and glue them into place. Make sure to glue on the non-gold side, otherwise you wont get a golden frame around your mirror.

Let the Glue Dry

Add some weight and let the glue dry overnight. While the hot glue may dry almost instantly, the E600 glue takes a few hours. I used a few of my giant art books and Mulder the skull to weigh down the layers.

Clean Up the Back

This is a completely optional step as, once the mirror is hung up, no one will know what the back looks like but you.

But, I tend to be obsessive compulsive about these sorts of things. So. Here we are.

A few years ago, I randomly found some decorative shelf liner (kinda like wall paper, but for shelves) in wood print at the dollar store. You can find it in most hardware stores or on Amazon. I remove the screws and used the shelf liner to cover up all the ugly glue and skewers. I then reapplied the screws.

So far, you’ve attached your skewers, reinforced the base, attached it to the decorative plate, and (possibly) cleaned up the back. If you flip the whole thing, and it looks like this, congratulations! You’re so close to being done.

Attach the Mirror

Because you can’t drill a screw into a mirror without breaking it, you have to be extra careful with this step. I lined the bottom edge of the mirror with the E6000 glue.

Because the mirror doesn’t make contact with the middle of the plate, it is important to build up the middle with glue and foam or cardboard. This way the mirror attaches to both the edges and middle of the plate. I stacked several layers of the hot glue gun sticks and melted them with my heat gun, then placed a square of cardboard on top and added another layer of hot glue. You can do this with only your hot glue gun and without a heat gun, it just takes a while and might hurt your “trigger” finger after a while.

Once I was sure I’d made enough layers, I centered the mirror on the decorative plate.

Let the Glue Dry, Again

With you mirror nicely centered, add some weight again and leave it overnight to dry. I used my giant art books and Mulder the skull, again. In the morning, chek that the mirror doesn’t move when you push it.

Hang Your Mirror

If you remove two of the screws, you can use them to add loop hangers, reapply them, and attach hanging twine.

How to Make a Starburst Mirror