A Guide to the Best of Southern California : 14 HANDMADE : Seven Years of Good Luck

MIRRORED GLASS, shaped and designed to suit your wildest fantasy--whether it’s in the outlines of Marilyn Monroe holding down her billowing skirts or a geisha in full costume--can now grace your walls. Betty Prompatima cuts such mirrors to order.

From any simple photograph, Prompatima will fashion a pattern, after which she cuts and polishes the mirrored pieces before putting them together.

Her style generally consists of gluing shapes onto a background--either another mirror or particleboard cut to the same size and painted black. Mirror on mirror is generally more pleasing, Prompatima advises, but particleboard--which her husband, Roy, cuts and paints for her--is less expensive.

In piecing together pictures, Prompatima borrows techniques from the creation of stained-glass works, which was her craft before she made the transition to mirrors.

The most popular designs in her repertoire are the teddy bear, flamingo and woman’s wide-brimmed hat with a profile of a face. Those sell for $69 to $79 in the 28-inch size. Other designs include flowers, animals, birds and clowns. A simple, double heart sells for $12. However, an almost life-size Marilyn Monroe goes for $1,200, and a large, Oriental female figure for which the cutting stage alone requires a week of work sells for $2,200.

Prompatima is generally able to fill orders within a week and will send them C.O.D. or prepaid via the U.S. Mail--unbroken, she assures.

Betty Prompatima, Eighteen Twenty, 921 N. Percheron Drive, Walnut; (714) 598-6631.