Toot Toot Tuesday-Tiled Mirror

My mom has a friend who makes these beautiful mirrors, and she had one made for me and my sisters for Christmas.
I really love mine, and wanted to make some for my friends....not as easy as it looks!
Still I made one for a really good friend of mine for her birthday, I really love how it turned out and she adores it-so it was worth all the work!
Chad did a huge portion of this since I am a little apprehensive about using his saw.

First he cut a bunch of 3 1/2 by 3 1/2 inch tiles from a 1x4.
Then he cut a WHOLE bunch of 3 inch rectangle tools from a couple 1x2's. No need to sand these, in fact it will make it harder at the end if you do, unless you have some edges you want to smooth down, but do not sand the faces of the tiles.
Then we glued a 12x12 mirror tile to a piece of ply wood, and played with the tiles until we had a pattern we liked.
Just for future reference, if we ever make another one with a 12x12 mirror, we will probably just cut a 2x2 into thin tiles and only use those-that way we wouldn't have to be making a bunch of tiny cuts to fill in our pattern that we decided on....Chad was very patient with me and what I wanted this to look like though and did all sorts of fancy cuts for me until I was happy with how it all looked.
This was a long process, next time we will sketch it out, know exactly what we want before we start cutting, but it was fun to do a project together and learn as we went. Next I glued all the tiles to the wood with wood glue and let it dry overnight, because Chad said that would be best, also it was very late at this point. The next day he took some painters tape and a piece of cardboard and masked off the mirror. Then he gave it several coats of a dark chocolate brown on the front and the back.Oh, before he did that, he took the whole thing and sanded all around the edges to give it a smooth edge and make the tiles more flush with the side of the ply wood. I didn't get a picture of any of this, since he did it while I was pre-occupied with something else. Next came the fun part. Deciding what papers to use, and then deciding where to put them. I chose 4 different pieces of scrapbook paper and then cut them all to size one at a time, and arranged them like a puzzle. I did this while I was watching Friends, and so it was actually fun and relaxing, although by the time I was done, my back was aching.Next came the mod podge. I glued all the paper down, and then went over it all with mod podge in one direction (left to right). Let it dry. Then I did it again. I let it dry again, and then did it one more time, pretty thick this time and this time I did it top to bottom. It wrinkled a bit, and I smoothed it out where it was really bubbly, but I really liked the texture it gave it.
The last thing I did was put a strong picture hanger on the back so that she can hang it if she chooses.And here it is all finished sitting on my mantle. Wow, my mantle really needs to be dusted. Try to look past that and see the pretty mirror. It looks a million times better in real life I think, and it's BIG. It was a time consuming project, but most of that time was just figuring out the logistics of it all. It was worth it though, it came out better than I hoped, and my friend loves it.
Success.

(PS-Don't forget to enter the GIVEAWAY for a Fancy Pants Prints Custom Design-giveaway ends tomorrow!)