See our secret to making "mercury mirror" in a safe and fun way!

English Transcription of Video:

Hi, thanks for stopping by Angel Gilding. I'm Alix, and today I've got a fun project for you. We are going to be working on transforming this lantern with a mercury mirror technique, so this is a pretty basic lantern. It's metal and glass and has an opening here for a candle or something like that. We just purchased this from a local craft store pretty inexpensively, and like I said, we're going to be transforming it with a mercury mirror technique. Now, before we jump in, let's talk quickly about the term mercury mirror. Anytime you hear the term mercury, people get concerned, understandably, if they should. Mercury is a dangerous chemical. We don't recommend that you work with it and you won't be. Today we are going to be using the silver nitrate technique of mirroring that is commonplace. All of our products for silver mirroring are silver nitrate base. There's no mercury in the process, but mercury mirror is a term for a specific type of antique effect. It's going to look really nice in our lantern and really help with a nice ethereal glow. So without further do, let's jump right in.

I went ahead and removed the pieces of glass from the lantern. The process for this of course, will vary based on the type of lantern that you have, but once I've got those pieces removed, I can start with the cleaning. Now I'm gloved up. As you can see, I have my liquid cleaner, my sponge, and that's just some tap water. Tap water's fine for this initial clean. If you have seen any of our other videos, you know how important cleaning is, so take your time with this. You'll see that I'm really scrubbing here and making sure that the whole area is clean. Those gloves are going to both protect my hands from the chemicals that we're using, as well as make sure that no oils from my hands or contaminants from my hands. Go onto the glass. I'm going to keep cleaning, really taking my time here, flipping the glass over, making sure that both sides are clean, even though I'll just be mirroring that one side and really focusing on those edges. 
Once that piece is fully cleaned, I'm going to rinse it off with my tap water and then move on to the next. I went ahead and sped this up for you, but you can see I'm really taking my time and focusing on those edges with each piece. Cleaning is really important for today's project. We're using the pump spray silver kit. We won't get into the details of how to measure each of the chemicals. We do have another video that shows that, and I'll link that in the description box below, but I've just measured my silver chemicals there and I'm finishing up with prepping all of my tools. That's my pump spray assembly, and I'm making sure that everything is ready for me at each step of this process. Preparation is key. I want to make sure that everything's ready for me when I need it. 
Once I've got my pump spray assembly all pumped up and my chemicals all ready, I am going to go ahead with the glass. Now I need to rinse off that tap water that I had used, and I'm just doing that here with some distilled water. I'm going to be using distilled water throughout the whole process, and now I am ready for my Wetting Agent. I'm a boot and suspenders kind of person. A wetting agent helps to wet the surface and oftentimes you don't need it with glass, but I noticed that my water was beating up on the surface despite some really good cleaning, so I'm using it here just to make sure that my chemicals can flow evenly onto the glass. 
I'm going to follow up with that wetting agent with sensitizer. That's what's actually going to bond the silver to the surface, and once I've got a good coating of sensitizer over all of the pieces, I need to let it sit for 30 seconds. Once my 30 seconds has passed, I'm going to rinse it off very well. Once again, distilled water and once all of that sensitizer is rinsed off, I'm tipping off any excess water so that I can go on to the silvering process. I always like to test my sprayer there in the corner, make sure everything's working well and the first process, the first pass here is just a gentle mist with the silver. You can see that it's starting to develop, and by the way, you can see I'm using my blue tray here. This is another useful tool part of our bench kit and really helps in the mirroring process. I can see that I needed to spray a bit more, so I'm adding some really inspecting the pieces. You can really see how quickly the transformation happens with the silver.
Once I think that I've got a real nice silver finish on each of my pieces, then I can go ahead and rinse off. I'm going to add a little bit more though to these pieces. I noticed they need just a little bit more silver coating. Once my silvering's done, I'm going to rinse off any of that excess silver and there you can really see how brilliantly bright that silver finish is. Once these are all rinsed off, I need to tilt them to allow them to dry completely and then we can move on to the next step. 
Now we're ready for a mercury mirror technique. This is a mist battle part of our antiquing kits and it provides a nice gentle controlled mist. The key to the mercury mirror technique is this silver remover. You can see it's that two part formula and I really want to be precise here, so I'm actually going to be measuring out equal parts of both part A and part B of the silver remover. Once I've got that measured out there in my 50 mil cylinder, I'm going to add that to my misting bottle, and I only want to mix up as much as I'm going to use for this project. Those two chemicals when combined are only active for about an hour, so I just put a little bit there in that misting bottle, mix it up, and once again, I want to test the sprayer here in the corner, make sure that everything's working properly before I go to my piece. 
When I go to spray, I'm going to be very specific with specific precise controlled mist. The silver remover is actually eating holes into the silver, so I want to do this in a very controlled way. It's a nice subtle and dramatic effect, so taking my time, making sure that I like the finish on each piece and then moving on to the next, and the silver remover works really quickly. You can see there that I've got the pinholes developing in the silver. That's that quintessential mercury mirror technique. I really like the effect there. It's subtle. It's nothing too dramatic. Once I've rinsed off all of that silver remover, I'm going to allow the pieces to dry completely, and now I need to protect the silver. So I've got my Nicholas Clear lacquer spray here. This is going to provide a clear coating to protect the silver, and I want a nice full coat over each piece.

Once

I feel like I've got a good coating there, I'm going to allow these to dry completely, and now I need to

Flip

The pieces over and clean up

The front

Of the glass, so using some more of that silver remover and a cotton swab. Taking my time to clean off any excess silver that might've crept over onto the front of the glass, make sure that each piece is ready to go. Once that final cleanup is completed, they will be all done,

And here it is our completed mercury mirror lantern. I'm really happy with how this turned out. I like that each of the is a slightly different, completely unique mercury mirror effect and it looks great when we have it lit with a candle within. I think that this is a great technique to try. As you can see, the antiquing is pretty straightforward. We'll be sure to include links to all of the products that we used in the description box below, as well as a link to our website. If you have any questions about this process, the products that we used, or any other questions regarding making and modifying mirrors, be sure to leave those in the comment box below and be sure to check out our website, angelgilding.com. Thanks for stopping by.