Did you know I started out as a DIY blogger, 6 years ago? Hence the name, donebymyself. I posted new blogs twice a week, and over half of them were simple DIY’s. I made everything, from lamps to rugs to vases to candleholders. But while developing my style I changed direction here on the blog and didn’t DIY as much anymore. We had to renovate our entire house and I suspect that had something to do with it. We were already so busy with renovating, I didn’t really feel like taking in smaller projects on top of that. I also felt at the time there were a lot of DIY bloggers and it all started to feel the same. I did some DIY’ing, but is was definitely on a much, much smaller scale.
But recently I have rekindled my love for DIY’ing. It truly is a great way to make items for your house, that are usually budget friendly, and not to mention the cool fact you’ve “done it yourself”. My husband and I are both pretty handy, so most DIY projects are not that much of a challenge for us. A while back we’ve made this DIY mirror, and some time before that I crafted a DIY lamp for my daughter.
So when I found myself in a YouTube rabbithole, filled with DIY foam projects, I knew I had to try that for myself. It’s cheap, it’s easy and I loved the results I saw passing by. And so we did! Let me show you the steps to this DIY foam mirror.
Step 1. Buy construction foam. We bought it from our local Action and it only costs €3.50 a bottle.
Step 2. Find a mirror. When DIY’ing I always try to buy as much secondhand as I can, so I found this 70×100 (so big!) for only €10 on Marktplaats. An absolute steal, if you ask me.
Step 3. Spray on construction foam. Yes, it really is THAT easy.
Because our mirror had a leveled frame, we decided to first do a layer on the lower part, and then spray over it with a second layer to make sure the end result would be an even layer. If you have a flat mirror/frame, there’s no need – you can just add one layer.
Step 4. Cover entire frame with construction foam. An important tip: foam expands like crazy, so a little goes a long way. You can always add more, if you feel like you need a bigger frame.
Step 5. Paint your foam to personalize your project.
Can you see how much it expanded? It covered the entire frame and more. We’ve decided we liked this result so I covered the mirror with paper so I could paint it. Paint is of course optional, but to customize and get rid of that typical foam look, I would highly suggest you do it.
At first I was really looking into a bright color. I thought of Rangwali by Farrow & Ball, our livingroom color, or other shades of pink we have in our paint stash. Eventually though, I realized I wanted to have this mirror in our livingroom, and decided against Rangwali. Instead, I took the color of our beige fireplace and used that exact paint. I didn’t plan for it to be on our fireplace, I actually had a different spot in mind. But, a mirror on a fireplace is always a classic and when I tried it out, I immediately loved it.
So there you have it! Our very easy, very cheap DIY foam mirror. I know some people can’t look past the “construction foam” look, but that’s fine. We really like it, the texture it gives, and the ton sur ton beige on our fireplace. And I love that’s it’s such a big statement!
I moved around some accessoires, the colorful table lamp moved a level down to the vintage trolley because it didn’t fit on the mantle anymore (the beautiful pink shade is by Palais). The pink roses and the bordeaux candles complete the look as I always need some color.
So, what do you think of this DIY foam mirror? Thank you for reading!
Love, Marrit
