Man I love Anthropologie.  There’s something about exotic chic home decor and fashion that can leave me in a puddle of drool.

So when I stumbled across this picture of a bone inlay mirror online awhile back the reaction was no different.

Isn’t it gorgeous?

But like everything at Anthropolgie, I couldn’t afford it.

Then one day a few weeks ago, as I was going through my bedroom purging things I didn’t need I looked up and saw my mirror.  The white frame blended so well into my white wall that I rarely noticed it let alone used it, and that’s when I light bulb went off.  What if I painted it? And not just paint it but do my own faux bone inlay look.  Granted the shape of the frame is nothing like the scalloped Anthro beauty but still full of potential.

So that night I headed to Walmart to pick up some spray paint and the next morning I was out in my garage, armed with my can of “watermelon” paint going to town.  Let me show you just how it turned out…

First things first.  I took some old newspapers and some masking tape and painstakingly covered all the spots on the mirror I didn’t want any paint to get on, which of course meant the reflective area but also the rope in the back (the mirror is about 60 years old, it actually belonged to my great grandma originally).

And then I sprayed away.

If I could do it over again I would have opted for a paint with a matte finish instead of gloss.  First because it ended up taking about 4 coats of paint to get an even look and second because I’m not a huge fan of the shiny effect.  Thankfully the paint from the flowers toned down the shiny-ness a bit.

Next up it was time to paint the flowers and vines.  I first drew the basic shapes on with a pencil and then went over them with a thinline paintbrush.

The original outline with paint looked like crap (as you can see above). It was all splotchy and uneven and I must admit I had a bit of a freakout moment, but once I started filling the shapes in and smoothing out the lines it began to look a lot better.

It took about three coats of white paint to get an opacity that I was happy with, then I propped it up to take a look and it brought a smile to my face.  Man it looked good!

I thought for a moment about just leaving it like this, but then I decided to go ahead and paint on the gold accents like I had originally planned.

Here’s a shot of how the corners turned out…

And how the center’s turned out…

I wasn’t 100% pleased with how the gold additions turned out.  They ended up being a little chunkier than I wanted, especially in the large central flowers, but overall I’m still loving the look!

So what do you think?  How did I do?

1 Can indoor/outdoor spray paint
White acrylic paint
Gold acrylic paint
Thin paintbrush (for outlining)
Thicker paintbrush (for filling in)
Pencil
Old newspapers
Masking tape

Because I already had most of the supplies, including the mirror, the only item I had to buy was the spray paint, bringing the cost of this project to the whopping total of $3.75!  That is quite a win if I do say so myself.