My Take On A Vintage Barbola Mirror.

One of my memories from the first year of Marc’s and my friendship was a Saturday afternoon  “playing” with his Melting Pot back in 2013 http://itsallfiddlefart.blogspot.com/2013/10/playing-with-marcs-melting-pot-and-utee.html.  A little while later Marc gave me my own melting pot and huge box of ultra thick embossing powders and Utee.  I like having it there, even if it only gets used a couple or three times a year, but while we are in lockdown it’s been out quite a bit and now I think I have a major project on my hands!

I have always loved vintage Barbola mirrors which date back to the 1930’s but they are always quite expensive and usually because of their fragile nature, being made of, I believe, Gesso paste are quite often damaged.

http://jollyvolley.co.uk/index.php/2018/01/20/reflections-on-the-history-of-the-barbola-mirror/

But, I’ve been thinking, why don’t I try to make my own?  I already have an old, oval shaped, wooden backed mirror at the back of my cupboard that I got a couple of years ago from the Georgian House in Evesham, which cost me £4 after haggling it down from £5.

I also had a huge box of embossing powders that were doing absolutely nothing sat sitting in the box ………

…… plus a whole pile of Martha Stewart silicon moulds from my lovely friend Di Wray http://pixiescraftyworkshop.blogspot.com/. What I have got to lose?

It’s all very much at the experimental stage at the moment, I found some metal leaves from an old necklace that I had a go at enamelling before getting really started, however am not sure whether to use them on this project or keep exclusively to using the Cosmic Shimmer ultra thick powders.

These are the flowers I have made so far.  I added a few pieces of glue stick to the mix each time I made a set of moulds to help prevent the flowers from being too brittle.

I then had a little play to see how the flowers might look on the mirror but as you know I have a terrible habit of what I call  “worrying” things, wondering what if ……

…….. well, this time I got wondering, what if I painted the flowers with the acrylic paints I got from Hobbycraft?

I didn’t have a clue where I was going with the idea, but I quickly realised that by doing so I could give the flowers a more aged look that reflected the original mirrors.

It’s a subtle difference from the unpainted ones at the top of the picture above, but what a difference, turning the mirror, may I say, into something much classier?

I am also thinking that I don’t really need the smaller flowers, although I might change my mind when I finally commit to gluing everything together, if I am careful I think I can  fit a single row of flowers all around the edge of the mirror without gaps, however, just in case, I am going to make a pile of leaves using the other moulds in the set.

It’s going to take a bit of time ……. but I am really excited, so watch this space.