Distressed Mirror- Anthropologie Knock-Off

I'm sure you have all seen the pictures of the antiqued mirror that Anthropologie sells. I think they're gorgeous but way over priced...(at least for me they are). I've seen how a lot of people have made their own versions using muratic acid. I've been wanting to make one of these but not really wanting to mess with muratic acid. A while back one of my fellow bloggers, Jill from Junkyvagabond.blogspot.com came up with an easier way to make one of these. Her way does not use muratic acid, she used Easy Off oven cleaner & made a beautiful mirror. You guys should check her blog out, she has some really great stuff on it. Anyway I finally decided to give it a try. Of course I start to tackle it  late in the afternoon, after the kids are home from school & I should be starting dinner.....(leftovers tonight guys). I thought I had some Easy Off but nope, I didn't. So I decided to try using Lime-A-Way. 

After taking the paper backing off of the mirror I just sprayed it all over it's backside & let it sit for awhile. By awhile I mean like maybe 3 minutes. I told you that I am not a patient person. Besides I had to hurry up & get this done so I could warm up the leftovers...lol. Well the Lime-A-Way did the trick, it started to remove the paint fast & with a little bit of scraping with a razor blade the silver coating started to come off too. Then I just took some sandpaper & sanded it until I got the look that I liked. Looking back now I know that I should have worn gloves but here's another fact about me, I only follow whatever directions that I feel are important. I tend to just "skip" the rest. Besides I have no idea if I even own a pair of rubber gloves.

I decided to leave a lot of the mirror intact, I only wanted it antiqued in a few areas. Afterwards I just slid in a piece of scrapbook paper that I liked. You could put anything behind here. I was thinking for Halloween maybe I'll put some old photos in there for a creepy effect.....hmmmm....

Overall I'm really pleased with how this turned out. Not too bad considering I spent a total of about 15 minutes on the whole thing.

You can see my tools that I used..Lime-A-Way, a razor, sandpaper & a lot of paper napkins (messy job)

I have another mirror that I want to do this to but it's a few feet across so maybe I will try the muratic acid on that one since it's such a bigger surface. I will have to add it to my list of outside projects to do once the weather gets nice again, which is a long way away since we got our first snow today. Oh yeah, that's the wonderful Chicagoland weather for you.....why do I live here again?  ;)

You can see the green paint coming off of the back, underneath was the silver mirror coating

all cleaned up

I took this so you can see what parts I antiqued or distressed (the pink paper shows through on those parts)

With the scrapbook paper that I put behind it

don't look at my fingers....I need a manicure, badly!

A shot with my family room reflecting in it...(see the chair that I just finished?)

One thing that I love about this little mirror is that I can use it as a tray too

The bird is looking at his reflection :)

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