Today I am going to show you how to make dollar store & thrift store items look like they are made of antique mercury glass. I got the idea from Pinterest, of course. :0) Here are some mercury glass lamps from Pottery Barn. Don't you just LOVE?
Supplies:
glass vases (or anything made of glass)
squirt bottle
water
Krylon Looking Glass Spray Paint (you can get it from Walmart for like $8 I think)
I went to the dollar store and got several sized glass vases. I also bought a few table lamps from a local thrift store. I wanted to put one on a side table in the living room and then two on our bedside tables. This project is very easy and cheap!
Instructions:
1. You take the squirt bottle full of water and squirt directly onto the glass. Depending on how many spots you want on your finished piece determines how much water you should spray on it. I say trial and error is the best method since these glass vases are so cheap. I did spray a generous amount onto each vase though. Make sure your squirt bottle is adjusted to a setting you like before you spray it on too. I had mine somewhere in the middle; I didn't want it to be too much of a mist and I didn't want it to be big splatters either.
2. Before the water dries, spray the paint directly onto the glass over the water spots. Make sure you shake the can of spray paint for a long time before you use it so that it doesn't drip.
3. Let it dry. And you are finished! That's it!
My friend Janet made some with me too!
You can see she is squirting water on top of the paint. Sometimes we felt like there wasn't enough water marks on the piece so we would just spray some more water on and then spray paint on top of it again.
Sorry I didn't take pictures of the finished pieces. I need to get better at my picture taking. Lesson learned. :-)
Here is one of the lamp's I bought from the thrift store. It was in an outdated shade of brassy gold. I wouldn't recommend buying a lamp like this for your project though. My advice to you is to find a lamp base made of clear glass. You know, those lamps that are clear and hallow on the inside? The reason I say this is because you don't get quite the same look because there are no see-through marks where the water was and the paint wasn't. Regardless I still think it gave the lamp a pretty cool look. You can see it's almost as if the paint looks like it beaded up.
Here is a picture of the finished lamp in my living room. I bought a burlap lampshade on sale from Home Goods and attached it to the base.
