Raise your hand if you, too, were blown away by the sick mirrored surfboard featured alongside the dangerously cool collection of shark tooth jewelry in Luv AJ‘s latest lookbook. It makes for the perfect objet d’art for us California-bred beach lovers, which had us seriously jonesing for our own. Lucky for us, designer Amanda Thomas is giving us the exclusive step by step tutorial, showing how we can create the same disco surfboard. And all for under $150.

You’ll need:

• a surfboard
• a surfboard wax scraper
• pickle wax remover
• Weldbond adhesive
• 1200 1″ x 1″ square mirror tiles

The first step is to track down an old surfboard. Try looking on Craiglist or post your search on Facebook – you’d be surprised at how many people have old boards they aren’t using and will give away for free. Any old board will work, no matter how worn and torn because we are going to be covering that baby with tiles so no one will see any of it’s blemishes. I also suggest getting a short board because they are much smaller and easier to tile.

The next step is to clean the board. A surfboard wax scraper will usually do the trick. The board needs to be completely bare, so removing any and all wax, stickers, or traction pads is key. It takes a bit of elbow grease to get the surfboard completely clean but the scraper is pretty effective. I also used a Pickle Wax Remover at the very end to get off any excess wax that I had missed. A clean board is crucial!

Now it’s time for the fun part. Grab the box of mirror tiles and the glue and get comfy – this step will takes about 2-3 hours.

Lay down cardboard underneath the board to protect the surface you’re working on. Start laying tiles down the left edge of the board. The edge is curved so you just need to follow that edge from top to bottom. Start at the very tip top of the board and make sure the tiles stick out about 1/8″ so that you can’t see the the surfboard underneath. In terms of glue, only put about a penny sized dollop on each tile. You don’t want the glue to squeeze over the edges of the tiles because it will dry and effect the final look of the disco tiles.

Start on the first edge, and once you hit the bottom, then go back to the top and start the second row. Keep making rows after rows and push the tiles as close to each other as possible. It may seem strange that the lines are curved, but they will come to a perfect point at the end. Use your discretion in tilting tiles a bit to fit areas if they do not sit side by side perfectly.

Keep gluing the tiles row by row and then you will come to the end. Let the glue set overnight and wipe clean with glass cleaner.

You’ve made a disco surfboard!

(images & tutorial courtesy of Amanda Thomas of Luv AJ)