Faux Mercury Glass (3 Tutorials)

I love mercury glass!

I love the randomly worn, very old mirror look,

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

as well as the randomly worn and patterned look,

as well as the ultra shiny, sleek mercury glass look:

Gorgeous, right? Love the shiny pumpkins from the Pottery Barn too, even though they aren’t the usual mercury glass look!

Warning, this is going to be a long post. It essentially combines 3 tutorial into one, even though they are all about Faux Mercury Glass!

Well, with the help of some Krylon Looking Glass Mirror-Like Paint and some dollar store glass containers I went experimenting in the hope of recreating that look for a lot less!

 

1.) The ultra shiny, sleek look seemed the easiest. I figured it was a good way to get to know the spray paint!

Here is what I learned:

Make sure you REALLY shake your looking glass spray well. It really does make a difference.

Also, you really have to do this outside.  You should be doing all your spray painting in a “well ventilated” area, but with this one I can’t stress it enough that it probably needs to be outside! Even outside the Acetone smell is still quite something to cope with!

I tried it on a fake pumpkin first, didn’t really look any different than normal silver spray paint.

Except that this stuff dries ultrafast! Much faster than normal spray paint! In our weather (90F and really dry) it dried in around 3 minutes to the touch and maybe 5 more minutes to have it really set. That’s when you spray it on a flat surface (like making a mirror) or on the outside of a  project (the Funkin™). On the inside of a vessel it takes a bit longer. Depending on how heavy-handed you were on the spraying, there is a lot of run off to the bottom. This can take hours to dry, depending on how much there is.

I have found however that the runoff can be carefully swirled around the inside of your vessel to give you more coverage and you also have a way to get it under awkward rims like my glass pumpkin has. You can’t really get there any other way as this particular spray paint does not  do multi-directional spraying very well. And it certainly doesn’t do upside down spraying!

 

Since the Funkin™ wasn’t a go and I realized that really we need the depth and shininess of glass to make this work, I combined the two ideas and used a glass pumpkin. Got this one at the thrift store a while back, but I also saw some inexpensive ones at Walgreens this year.

I find the glass pumpkins a little cheesy by themselves but “blinged” up like this with the mercury glass look I really love the elegant touch.

I taped off the rims of the pumpkin, then I taped a plastic bag on the rest of it. I did this as a two-step taping because I wanted to be able to check coverage from the outside without having to pull off the entire rim tape .

Unfortunately, this pumpkin won’t be suitable for food though, since the spray paint is on the inside, but that’s ok with me It can house a host of other things and when pumpkin season is over, it will be a lovely vessel without the lid!

 

 

{I just LOOOVVEEE my shiny mercury glass pumpkin! }

 

2.) Next, I was trying to figure out some ways to have the grunged look of an old worn mirror. Since I can’t just apply a filter like I do in photoshop, I would obviously need something that can be finely misted and easily removed afterwards. There might be tutorials for this out there somewhere, but I was in experimentation mode, I didn’t even look  

So I experimented with a water spray bottle. My hope was that the water would just evaporate, leaving some areas more exposed to the shiny stuff than others.

And it worked! But apparently I won’t be able to show you just how well it worked since I’ve found it impossible to get a true to life photo. Even at a really thin coat (or two) it is so reflective that it just picks up everything. And the photographs don’t seem to show the “thin” areas very well either.

These are the best I could do. I’m hoping that maybe once I’ve put them in the revamped living room, they may show up better in the overall photo.

Photo 1 shows the texture a little better, while photo 2 (of the same vase) shows just how reflective it is, despite the mottled, uneven coverage!

Here’s a close up of the pattern. Please ignore the black reflection of my camera lens in all the pics. See how it looks like it’s only sprayed on in the spots, yet it is reflective all over anyway. Cool, right?

And here is what I did:

First I covered my vase. I cut the top off a regular plastic shopping bag (so I didn’t have to deal with handles etc) and taped it to the neck of the vase. Then I rolled the top of the tape backwards, toward the outside, so it would line up evenly with the rim of the vase.

Then I misted it with water. It seems you need to have a really fine mist, with as little water as possible, so you don’t have too much run. Unfortunately the spray itself can be quite runny too, so it’s somewhat unavoidable, but less water helps to minimize it.

Now take very gentle, sweeping sprays into your glass vessel. Really gentle! This stuff is runny and when combined with the water it can run a fair bit and mess up your water mist pattern.

It won’t look like it’s doing much at first, but this stuff somewhat comes out more as it dries, so be patient. Your can always add another coat!

Then I turned it upside down to dry. We are so dry around here it didn’t take very long but in colder, wetter climates it could take a while for the water to evaporate!

Then take off your tape and bag and check coverage. If necessary, re-tape and do another very light coat!  

 

And when you bring all your stuff back in from outside, make sure you have the cap on your spray paint. So you don’t accidently bump into the door frame and set off a little squirt of spray paint on the door, which won’t come off and will necessitate the painting of the whole door. 

I hear it can happen. Not that I would know from personal experience or anything

 

3.) Of course, now that I have that down, I really wanted to find a way to make something like the set or 3 Hurrican lamps from Mothology above!

My first thought was, that obviously some other, much more precise medium would have to be used to do the underlying pattern.  And some way of applying it will need to be found. Stencils I thought!

And of course this would have to happen on something with totally straight sides!

Since I am using my Silhouette Craft Cutter for almost anything, I thought I would try that first.

I designed a pattern in the software of the craft cutter and cut it out on vinyl. I liked the idea of vinyl as it would stick pretty well to the glass and wouldn’t allow the adhesive to seep under it! And I have a lot of vinyl around these days lol

Then I applied the pattern to the inside of the glass container, leaving the spaces I wanted for the pattern open (see removed bursts above.)

If you’re having trouble getting the vinyl into the glass properly, run it over your t-shirt or something first to make it just a tad less sticky and you’ll find that it’s much easier to get into the container. Once it’s in, just start on one end and continue to press it to the glass all the way around. A clear transfer tape makes this process much easier, as you see where everything goes so much better!

The next step was applying some Adhesivefor the silver leaf application. I followed the instructions on the packet.

Once the adhesive turned from milky to clear on the exposed parts, I brushed the silver leaving on.

After that dried I peeled off the vinyl. I purposely made sure that the bursts were unevenly  covered with the silver leaf to give me more of that grunge look.

Next I taped off the outside of my glass and followed the same spraying procedure as in the one above. A misting of water first, then a couple of thin coats of the spray paint. This time I let the glass container dry on it’s side, rolling it gently to let the paint and water run-off go sideways, just for a different pattern.

And here’s the finished product!

So there you have it! 3 Faux Mercury Glass projects!

And even after all that (4 projects, counting the fake pumpkin fail) the spray paint can seems to still be at least half full! So it seems that it goes a LONG way!

I will update this post once I have done over our living room and the mercury glass items have found their “prime” decoration spot

I hope you enjoyed these tutorials!

Have a lovely day!

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