This was an experiment I thought I would share. It’s an acrylic mirror, etched from the back.
This etches the reflective part away.
Then take a sharpie and color in across the back. Just color in the whole thing.
Flip it over and all you see is the places where the mirror was lasered off, like so:
This was just a quick image of flowers and one solid color. Imagine what you can do with multiple markers and a bit of mirror acrylic.
I love how the members of this community constantly explore and expand the potential uses of the 
developing new techniques for the benefit of the rest of us.
Thanks @shogun !
You know, backing that with a first-surface mirror behind the sharpie would probably look amazing.
Have you tried backlighting it?
What about using alcohol to make a gradient?
There’s some good potential here.
Good job. I love doing these with motivational/ inspirational quotes.
This looks wonderful.
This is wonderful, I recently got some rose gold mirror acrylic and just last night I was thinking about trying to etch the back and how it would look but I didn’t think about colouring the back. I’m definitely going to give this a go!
Way to lean into it man. Color was a great idea. 
That turned out beautiful! So it was just a plain mirror? I’m going to have to try this! Thanks for sharing how to do it.
@evansd2 I have not tried lighting it yet, but you know I will. 
The alcohol gradient is also a nice idea.
@ellencadwell It was just plain mirror about 1/4 thick.
Going to play some more over the weekend.
Hmm actually alcohol and extruded acrylic can be a bad combo. I retract that idea
That came out really great.
Now I have some ideas to try
Yeah, the crazing can be crazy from just a little bit of alcohol.
This is very creative!
It depends a lot on the particular alcohol. Methanol will definitely cause crazing, and is sometimes added to other alcohols so you need to test on scrap first.
Regular IPA will do the same in some cases as I’ve found out when I want thinking about it.
Doesn’t take much around the edges to ruin a piece.
edit: ruin, not run 
this is beautiful. what settings did you use? and where did you get this beautiful flowers from?
All just proofgrade settings for thick acrylic. The big difference is you are etching the back (where the mirror backing stuff is), not the front. So you might need to flip your image.
The flowers are from shutterstock:
thank you! beautiful
Thanks Shogun,
Another question: did you mask the back of the mirror?
No the back was unmasked. However I left the masking on the front so I wouldn’t get any flashback when doing the cuts.
This is so cool. I work with mirror in my projects all the time! This will add a new look to my projects!
