DIY Mercury Glass

I Luuuuuurve the look of mercury glass.  I have been seeing it a lot lately in design magazines and on oodles of blogs.  I have a couple mercury glass pieces, but I want more!!  My husband says that’s my motto…..I want more! 
So anyway…..I have a ton of clear vases that are just hanging out in my garage collecting dust and pollen.  My wheels were spinnin’ about what I could do with these vases.  So, to Google I went!
I Googled “DIY Mercury Glass” and found a great article on Martha Stewart about making your own mercury glass.  I don’t know about you guys, but all of her tutorials seem so vague to me!!  I need some serious step-by-step instructions, people!!!  But, I could actually handle this tutorial.  It was pretty straight forward. 

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All I really needed was the Krylon Looking Glass spray paint.

Three ridiculous days & 5 home improvement and craft stores later, I still could not find the Krylon Looking Glass spray paint!!  No one in my town carries it!  I could have ordered it off of Amazon by now and it would have been here in 2 days!  UGH!  So, I checked one last place that I always forget about…..Ace Hardware.  No luck there either.  But, I did find an alternative (or so I hoped).  It is Krylon’s Chrome Aluminum spray paint.  It still had that “mirrored” finish that I was looking for.  So I bought it & thought I’d give it a whirl.  And IT WORKED!!!   Woo-hoo!
So here’s how you do it:
You will need:

• a squirt bottle filled with water
• a clear vase or votive holder or candlestick or whatever else you want to make into mercury glass
• Krylon’s Looking Glass spray paint OR Krylon’s Chrome Aluminum spray paint

First, you need to make sure your vase is clean so give it a good rinse and wipe down first. 
Then, you are going to mist the inside of the vase with the squirt bottle.  You don’t want to douse the inside and puddle it with water.  You just want to mist all around the inside.

It should look something like this when you’re done misting:
  
See all the little beads of water?  That’s what you want!  That’s what is going to give it the “aged” or “antiqued” look you’re going for.
Next, you want to lightly spray the inside of the vase with the Looking Glass or Chrome Aluminum spray paint (use the rules of spray painting with this project too!  Light, even coats does the trick).

You really only need to do one or two coats (depending on how dark you want it to be).
Turn the vase upside down on a ventilated surface (a cooling rack will be just fine).  I have a basket that has a “mesh” top and so I just sat it on that.
Let the vase dry overnight.
When it’s all dry, it will look something like this:
 


This is a different vase that I did a couple of weeks ago.  It looks A LOT better in person!  The pictures just don’t do it justice! 
This is a simple project that took me all of about 10 minutes!
If you try it, let me know how it turns out! 

Amy