I got this fabulous idea off of Pinterest one day when I was searching for Christmas decorations on how to make faked mercury glass looking items (sorry, I don't remember where it was or who it was that I got the idea from - it got lost in the sea of Pinterest items!) and I thought I could easily do this!! Mercury glass items are all the rage in the Pottery Barn catalogs this season - but this is done at just a fraction of the price!! All you need is some Krylon "Looking Glass" spray paint, some glass items, and some black paint. I got the Krylon at M's using a 50% off coupon (I got the last two cans of it on different days) and I scoured my local thrift store and bought all my glass pieces at $2 each or less (the glass Christmas tree was only $1!!).
You simply have to spray several thin layers of the looking glass paint on the inside of the glass pieces (If possible - I wasn't able to do that to the candlesticks, so I just sprayed the outside of them). It takes a while and several coats of paint - making sure that it's dry between each coat. The small candlesticks took the paint the best - they are 25% leaded glass (still had the tags on them) so I don't know if that had anything to do with it. The Christmas tree was the hardest to do because the paint just kept sliding right off of the glass. I finally just sprayed a whole bunch on the inside, set it on it's side and rolled it back and forth for several minutes until it got coated. It's not perfect, but that's ok - mercury glass has an imperfect look to it anyway! After the pieces were coated how I wanted them to look, I took some black paint (which I already had) and sponged little spots all over the pieces, making sure to kind of rub it in with my fingers so the black wasn't so sharp and crisp looking. After the black paint dried, I sprayed one more thin layer of the silver on top of it.
I love the way these turned out, and all I spent was $22 in total which includes both cans of paint and all the glass pieces!! I can't wait to start decorating for Christmas now!!BTW - the red is not on the pieces - it is just a reflection of something that was sitting next to them!
TFL!!
That is so cool!
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