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Mexican Mirrors

desktop1We love creating a Mexican Marketplace in our school and including different items sold at the marketplace.  Decorative mirrors are commonly found in Mexico at the marketplace and are usually made from tin with a mirror in the middle. My 4th grade students did a fantastic job creating radial designs on their folk art mirrors inspired by the ones sold at the market. Totally terrific! Totally fun!

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1. Use 12″ x 12″ construction paper and a pencil, create a large circle or use a circle template. With a smaller circle template, we used a small paper plate, trace another circle inside the large circle. Add fun patterns around the circles.

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2. Outline with a sharpie and color in the shapes with Crayola’s construction paper crayons. Make sure to fill in the shapes completely.

~MIRROR~

3. To make a mirror, use the silver side of 3″ x 3″ copper tooling and create patterns with a stylus or a pencil. Make sure you have a newspaper under the foil to pop the designs outward on the foil.

4. Glue down the mirror with tacky glue, then add sequins.

Display together or separately.

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Make sure you follow along for more Art of Mexico.

Keep on Creating!

Laura

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12 Comments

  • Reply
    Darla Kendrick
    October 24, 2016 at 5:07 pm

    If copper tooling isn’t available. would aluminum foil be a suitable substitute?

    • Reply
      Laura
      October 24, 2016 at 7:11 pm

      Yes, I would purchase the heavy duty foil. 🙂

  • Reply
    Barb
    May 8, 2018 at 12:07 pm

    Those are really beautiful!

  • Reply
    Kristin
    June 21, 2019 at 1:12 pm

    Love it. Great project for teaching radial balance! Thank you!

  • Reply
    Candace
    August 25, 2019 at 9:34 am

    Do you think 2nd grade is capable of doing as great a job as these? Yours came out beautiful. This is my 1st year and I think this would make a graddy lesson on line, shape, and pattern.

    • Reply
      Laura
      August 25, 2019 at 4:06 pm

      I would definitely try it out. Maybe use rulers for straight lines, buttons for circles etc. Happy Creating! 🙂

  • Reply
    Sharee Peoples
    October 12, 2020 at 4:40 pm

    Great love the pictures I did them they are great and a good project for your students.

    • Reply
      Sharee
      October 12, 2020 at 4:42 pm

      Same here they are great!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Reply
    Corrie
    November 17, 2020 at 7:38 am

    Laura, In your video you talk about templates or stencils, are those here somewhere? I know in the directions (and can figure out) to use something to trace around, but just curious if they were here and just hiding. I can’t wait for my artists to try this!

    • Reply
      Laura
      November 17, 2020 at 4:37 pm

      Hi Corrie, I just had the students use butter lids and paper plates for templates. 🙂 It helped with eliminating frustrations of creating a circle.

  • Reply
    Christy
    September 11, 2021 at 9:05 pm

    Question which time period would you say the began making items like these for the market places…. ? Our art program goes along with different time periods… right now we are in ancient….

    • Reply
      Laura
      September 12, 2021 at 9:53 am

      I would connect it to Aztec and Mayan. 🙂

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