This mirror is part of a whole slew of mirrors that I banged out in preparation for the Sandy Hill craft show (more scintillating posts to follow soon). I was lucky enough to find a whack of these Ikea Malma mirrors at various garage sales all over Ottawa this summer. We actually had fabulous luck in the garage sale department this summer. Humour me by letting me regale you with a tale of our garage sale luck.
One day, as we waited for the groomer to finish with Dexter, we cruised the nearby sales. I bought 2 of these mirrors at one of the sales, so I was already pretty happy, but then we stumbled upon the mother lode. Someone was selling their espresso machine. And, joy of joys, it had a milk frother!!! (In case you couldn’t tell, I enjoy my coffee with milk.) The guys was asking $10, which, in retrospect, was a pretty good price. We hemmed and hawed, but eventually walked away empty-handed. Our rationale: we didn’t need more ‘stuff’. As we wandered around a couple more sales, our conversation kept coming back to that darn espresso maker. We eventually decided to go back and see if it was still there. If it was, it was a sign from the coffee deities that we should buy it. If it wasn’t, well, it just wasn’t meant to be. So we returned. And lo and behold, there it was, in all its coffee-making glory. And, wonder of wonders, the price had magically dropped to $7! So we immediately shelled out, right? Wrong! We hemmed and hawed again! We peppered the guy with questions: Does it work? Really, does it work? Why are you getting rid of it? Is it heavy (we had to walk about 2.5 km with it)? Does it work? And then, you’ll never believe this. He turned to us and said (and not even in an exasperated tone, which is even more astounding): “You know what? I just want to get rid of it. Really. Just take it. Please.” And you know what the best part is? We weren’t even trying to talk him down in price. But I digress…
Let’s get back to business. The mirror. At first I wanted it to have 8 different coloured squares. Then I looked in my glass bins and was horrified to see that my colour selection was severely depleted. I couldn’t even scrounge up 4 colours (well, 4 colours that looked good together). In fact, even the 2 colours I picked were a bit scant, so I had to supplement them with grey. It’s times like these when I find myself wishing for a wealthy arts (OK, crafts) patron for whom money is no object and who will keep me well supplied with fabulously gorgeous glass (and tasty wine and coffee with milk and dark chocolate…). What? A girl can dream, can’t she?
