Faux Mercury Glass Stars

Since experimenting with some ways to create Faux Mercury Glass a few weeks ago, I realized that I am not quite done with the whole Mercury Glass thing!

Since I decided that this year we are going to have  a less traditional red and green type of Christmas decor and more emphasis on silver, white and the odd little sparkle here and there, I think that Mercury glass type items would fit that bill just beautifully.

 

When we went to IKEA the other day I saw these plain glass ornaments and instantly thought that these would be perfect to create more Mercury Glass with!

On  side note, I couldn’t believe that most of the Christmas stuff was already gone by the time we got there. It was in the middle of OCTOBER . Boggles the mind really

So, I was going to try a few different things on these ornaments.

Two are following the methods I described here.

 

We need the following:

- Krylon Looking Glass Mirror Paint

- Misting bottle with water

- cheap glass/ceramic bowl (I got mine at the dollar store, 5/$1) – needs to be glass/ceramic and will probably have to be disposed of

- household sponge

 

 

 

First I tried a fine misting of water, followed by two ever so light sweeps of the Krylon paint.

It yielded this result:

Again, these are somewhat hard to photograph, but hopefully you get the idea! All the grey spots are in fact reflective spots.

Next I tried the same principle, but with rather large water beads this time.

This is what it looked like just after spraying:

 

And this is it after it dried from the other side: And here it is on the sprayed side after it dried:

Then I thought I’d try and see how stippling/sponging would work with this.

Let me warn you now, you will have to work pretty fast!

First tear off a bit of the sponge. It makes it easier to work with!

Next, gently spray some spray paint into the bowl. Give it some good bursts, so some of the liquid paint collects at the bottom. It’s best if you pick the bowl up and tilt it slightly while spraying. You can collect the liquid paint the easiest that way.

It will stay liquid for a short while, so work fast.

Dip the sponge in the paint. It sucks up all the paint pretty quickly.

Now lightly sponge on your ornament.

Let it dry. And this is the end result:

 

One more thing though: The spray can rub off of the back of these ornaments. Not too easily, but it does rub off with some pressure.

This can work to your advantage if you don’t like what you see and want to start over. However, if you don’t want it to rub off, just give it a little coat of Mod Podge Dimensional Magic on the sprayed side. Not only will it protect the Faux Mercury Glass treatment, it will also give it that glass ornament depth and shine on both sides!

And here are all three versions one more time:I’m not really sure which one I like the best. They each have a unique way of reflecting and sparkling once they hang up on some branches! But I have to say that I do rather like the sponging result.

And it opens up some more possibilities as the result is slightly more controlled than spraying into a container. Sometimes there may even be a possibility for both.

I’m thinking little faux mercury glass votive holders and maybe some glass bauble ornaments. A bit of sponge could be  fixed to a skewer and inserted into smaller openings than the spray can be. I see more experimenting in my future!

Experiment with it yourself and please share your results with me!

 

I’ll be linking up to many linking parties over on the side bar. Please visit for some great projects!