I made a thing

Not the finished product, but my inspiration. My old place was in an attic to all the walls were angled, no place to hang any art. My new apartment has 9 foot ceilings and large bare walls and the cheapest large prints I could find were upwards of $60. I needed some art but I'm still paying down so much student debt my budget is tight. I saw this table on Pinterest and thought it looked adorable.

I started with a blank white canvas (24x32 inches, $20 from Jysk). I could have gone cheaper but I wanted the material to be sturdy. I tried to line out the chevron pattern with a ruler first but it was tougher than I thought. A quick Google search later and I found this method. Tape off a checker pattern then carefully cut away the extra tape. Its faint here but you can see I used a marker over the tape to make sure I was leaving a chevron and not need to start again.
Of note, this is 2" wide painters tape, not the standard 1.

Cut to broken mirrors. I had a collection of 12" wide round and square mirrors I had bought years ago. The only real way to adhere to them to a wall was tape or glue (those white things in some of the backs are the remnants of the foam tape that they came with) and I didn't want to do that again. I broke up 2 round and 2 square mirrors (for some variability in shapes) in an old lulu bag by simply going outside, holding the bag up high, and dropping them in the concrete a few times

Now the difficult part. I printed off a silhouette I liked and started to arrange the mirror pieces face down on top of it.

There was a lot or rearranging and replacing trying to find the right arrangement. If I was doing it again I'd go a larger and simpler shape but I'm happy with the way it turned out. Total the placement of the mirrors took 3-4ish hours, a lot of fixing because pieces would shift as I worked and I had to shift them back to get it perfect.

Almost done. A step I didn't photograph was the painting of the canvas. I used spray paint from Canadian tire ($7). Now it wasn't perfect, there was some bleed under the tape, not a lot but some of the lines came out less than straight. I like it. It wasn't the plan hand I was initially upset but it quickly grew on me. And with the rough nature of the mirror pieces I thought it fiting. I made the decision after seeing the paint to make the rock formation on the bottom more rough. I made the bottom line jagged instead of perfectly straight.

Finished product. Leaving the pieces face down I quickly and carefully out a few drops of krazy glue on each piece of mirror, placed the canvas down straight on top very carefully and placing a few books on top to weigh it down for a few minutes until I was sure the glue was dry.

A relatively cheap art piece that I had fun making. A few pieces of mirror were a bit loose so I had some touch up gluing to do, and you can see some pencil on the canvas I still have to erase but I'm very happy with my little art project and ready to tackle something a little bit bigger!!