Insert an image or transparent area in a purchased mirror

English Transcription of Video:

Hi, thanks for stopping by Angel Gilding. I'm Alix, and today we're using the Fine Line Silver Removal Kit to remove a very specific section within a commercially made mirror. So we've got this mirror here, I just purchased this at a local home improvement store and we're going to be removing a specific area within it. Now, a lot of times people ask us about this process because they want to remove a simple shape, maybe a square or a rectangle. You want to put a photograph behind it, or some people like to have a large mirror and have a TV behind it, something like that. And that's a pretty basic shape and certainly this kit works for that. But I figured for today we would kind of push the limits a little bit. So we are actually going to be removing a kind of detailed section here.

This is my mask, and I'll talk a lot about this in a little bit. But you can see here that with this kit you can remove a very detailed portion of the mirror or you can remove a very basic portion. So this is one I've already done and you can see here that it's started out as a traditional square, commercially made mirror. And through this process I was able to remove the mirroring from the area here so that the letters are really popping out. You could always put a different color behind paint it. The opportunities are really endless once you do this process and it's pretty straightforward and the kit has pretty much everything you need. Now one of the first questions when you're working with a commercially made mirror, is it silver or is it aluminum? And we've got a lot of information on the website about the differences.

This particular kit does come with the Mirror Remover and the Aluminum Remover. Mirror Remover is kind of a multipurpose remover. It removes silver, copper as well as galena mirroring. The Aluminum Remover is a kind of uni-tasker. It just removes aluminum mirror and they're not interchangeable. So you have both of those ready for you in the kit. And then you also have the Multi-Strip. Multi-Strip is a paint stripper that we sell. It's a more environmentally friendly paint stripper and it works a little bit differently than other paint strippers. So why don't we go ahead and jump right into using that. So what's really important in this process is understanding the layers, understanding the steps in the process, because a lot of people when they see our removers say, oh, okay, well I just take the paint off and I use the remover. Well, these removers are liquid.

They are going to flow the way that water does. And what we're looking for here is a very specific design. So if you follow our steps, you can get that specific design and also protect the other mirror that you want to keep. The way that we do that is first you've got to figure out exactly what section you want to remove. And like I mentioned, I've got this mask here, this mask I actually made on one of those desktop vinyl cutters, and those are actually pretty inexpensive. So if this is something that you think you may be doing on a multiple times, you may want to get one of those.

The first step with the vinyl is to determine what area do you want to remove. Your vinyl needs to match up with the area that you're going to remove, not with what you're going to protect. So for me, I wanted to remove a kind of circular section. I thought this would be a really nice border. So you can see my vinyl is the area where I want to remove it, which means all this other area is going to remain silver. So you want to make sure of course, that your vinyl matches up well on your mirror here, that it fits perfectly, which mine does. I can see that here. And just kind of keep in mind more or less where it's going to be because you're going to be using the multis strip to remove the backing paint in that area. It doesn't need to be perfect, but you want to kind of save yourself a bit of work later on to just remove the paint in that general area.

So for me, that's going to be kind of a wide band all the way around. So I know the corners and the very center are going to keep their traditional mirror backing paint that they already have. And this is the Multi-Strip. As you'll see, it's kind of different. It's a little bit gloopy. I kind of equate it to working with jello. I've got my paint scraper here and you just want to get some out of the container. See as I spread it along, you can see what I mean. It's kind of goopy. And what I'm going to be doing here is working it around. You want to get a pretty decent layer. It doesn't need to be too thick, but you do want to make sure that you're covering the full area that you want to have removed. And actually for something like this that's a bit more detailed, I find a plastic spoon can be pretty helpful. It helps me to control it a little bit more and I'll just keep working my way around. Notice that I'm not being precise here, so I am inevitably going to be removing mirror backing paint off of mirror that I want to protect. And that's okay. That's part of this process and we'll talk through what we're going to do about that and when we get to that step.

Okay, so once you feel like you've got a pretty good coverage there and it looks like it's going to work, you want to bring your stencil back, your vinyl and just do a double check, make sure that it looks like it's going to cover it. I'm going to do that. You don't want to apply it obviously, but you want to just kind of hold it over and see if it looks, yeah, I think

That looks like it's going to work for me. So just put that back down there. Now when in doubt you want to remove a little bit more of the backing paint than you think that you'll need because you want to get this done all in one step. If you find later on that you've got an area where there's still paint, that can be kind of tricky. And depending on how detailed your design is, it can make that a little bit complicated. So you do want to make sure that you take your time here and see that it is really fully covered in the area that you're going to eventually remove the mirroring. And then the next step here is to really just let it sit. So we have waited a few hours and you can tell already that my Multi-Strip has certainly done its work.

I just did a test section here and you can see that it really has just lifted off quite easily. So I know that I'm ready to go and I want to just gently scrape off any of that lifted paint as well as that Multi-Strip. Now, I didn't mention before. Obviously you can see I'm wearing gloves with this and I'm doing this on top of some paper. That's to make cleanup easier. Multi-Strip is a relatively safe product, but you certainly do still want to wear gloves for the process. And the paper is to protect my bench and make my cleanup a little bit easier. So keep just gently scraping. Once again with my paint scraper, you don't want to accidentally scratch the glass, just push it off there. And anywhere that the paint feels a little loose, just go ahead and push it off.

Okay, so now I've got my Multi-Strip off. I've got that paint that has lifted off off of the mirror, and you can see here that now I've got that circle of my exposed mirror. Now this is one of the best ways to really test if you have an aluminum mirror or a silver mirror. I can see here on this backing that it looks kind of peachy copper. And that's actually an indication that it's a silver mirror because a lot of silver mirrors commercially especially, are made by depositing silver on the glass and then backing it with a galvanic copper layer. So when you see that, it's a pretty sure sign that you've got silver. If this was just bright, shiny silver appearance, then that would actually be indicative of likely being an aluminum mirror. But really the best way to tell us is with those removers, my next step is to go ahead and rinse off this glass.

I'm going to actually head over to my sink and rinse this off. I do recommend that you rinse it with distilled water just to make sure you're not introducing any kind of contaminants that might be in your tap water that could be affecting the mirror layer because of course right now we do actually have some mirror exposed that we want to preserve that we want to keep. So we do want to treat this gently. So I'll go ahead and rinse it off and then come back and we'll move on to the next step. So I've got my piece all rinsed off once again with that distilled water and I'm padding it dry with some disposable shop towels. I want to make sure that your piece is completely dry so that your vinyl adheres really well.

And I think we're good here. Now, if I saw when I was doing this that I had paint left on the area where my vinyl was going to go, I would want to go ahead and apply some more Multi-Strip to the area and let it lift off because if you find that you've got areas with paint and you want to then go and remove it later within your design, that can get a little bit tricky. So it's important to take that time. Now, as I had mentioned, I went ahead and made this design with my vinyl cutter and I've got it just here on some transfer tape and the design is what I want to have removed. So I want to protect that actually from my paint. So what I'm going to do here is really try to be precise, taking my time to deposit it, to apply this properly on my piece, get it as centered as I possibly can, and then I've got my squeegee here. This is a really useful tool and put that down. And now just really make sure that that vinyl is fully applied onto the glass. Lift off my transfer tape. Bit tricky to do with the gloves on. Okay, it's lifting off nicely.

Okay, so now you can see where my design is. And so all of these holes, these areas in here, I want to have protected silver. I don't want that to be the exposed glass and everywhere around here. So now I need to paint that to protect it from the mirror remover I'm going to be using. And to do that, I'm going to be using the gray roll coat that comes in the kit and we opted for gray because a lot of traditionally commercially made mirrors are black and we just thought it would be beneficial to have. So you could see where the differences are. It's not going to matter visually to your finished piece. This is all being done on the back. If for some reason you wanted to use one of our other paints, you could do that as well.

Okay, that looks nice and good to go. And then I'm just going to paint over the full piece. So overlapping on the vinyl. And a lot of people ask us, do I have to use your paints? Could I just buy a regular paint at the store? You do actually want to buy a paint that's designed to be used with a mirror. And there's two reasons for that. Both of them are important here. First is that this paint is compatible with mirroring, compatible with silvering, so it doesn't have any properties in it that's going to affect the silver are going to tarnish the silver. A lot of paints have products in them that are really good for the paint but then can have a negative effect on silvering and you wouldn't want that to happen. And the other is that mirror paints are designed to break cleanly at a line. They're brittle. So most often with paints you'll see that they're flexible and that they'll peel well with something like this. When it dries and we lift off this vinyl, we want it to break right at that line. We want the paint to break there. And so that's another reason we want this type of paint.

So just take your time. I'm just using one of our foam brushes here. A roller would be fine too. We find that foam brushes are better than bristle brushes with this because you want to make sure you're getting a good even coverage and that you don't have any of those brush marks showing through. Okay, now when you feel that you've got a good even coverage, you haven't gotten any exposed mirror here, then go ahead and let it dry. We are back once again, we waited several hours to fully let our paint dry. And depending on your environment, you may need to wait overnight. You definitely want to make sure that your paint is completely dry and you can see here that it actually goes flat matte when it's dry. So one of the ways that you can tell and the back of this mirror right now isn't looking very pretty.

If I wanted to, I could certainly put the gray over all of it for a consistent look, but to be honest, there isn't really a reason to do that. And the next step is going to be to lift off the vinyl and you can actually see where the vinyl is. Even though I've painted over it, it is kind of risen up and we can see where it is. And to lift off the vinyl, I'm using something really simple, just a paper clip. I've kind of bent it out just to get that point there. And what I want to do is lift off the vinyl without scratching or damaging either the glass or the part of the mirror that I'm wanting to keep. So the way I do that is just take the tip here of your paperclip and just push it in so you can get a little bit of the vinyl to lift off.

Can see I've got that here. And then just keep working your way around. Depending on your design, this could be really easy, it could be complex. Take your time lifting it off. I find this really satisfying too, actually. You get to really start to see a visual impact of what you've got going on here. There we go. So all the vinyl has lifted and now all of this mirror that's exposed is what is going to be removed. And I'm going to start seeing that pretty quickly. Now, like I said, I know that my mirror is a silver mirror with the copper backing, so I'm going to be using my mirror remover and just taking a small amount, putting it in a cup.

If you had any questions about mirror remover or how these products work, we have a lot of information on our website. We have a video about the mirror removers and you could check all of that out. And I'm going to take a cotton swab. Now as you're doing this, the mirror remover is chemically breaking down the mirror, so you don't necessarily have to rub very hard and you do want to be careful not to scratch the glass. So I use a cotton swab, nice and soft, dip it in there, and then just kind of work my way around. And what's going on here is that the paint is protecting the mirror I want to keep and the mirror remover is lifting off the rest. So I can go right over my design here without being concerned because I know that my paint is protecting that.

And now each mirror is going to respond a little bit differently depending on how the manufacturer made it. But just take your time. I find sometimes it's nice to just let it sit on the surface and then you can go back and wipe it up. Now I put my mirror remover to work. I put it all over the exposed mirror. And you can see here when I flip it over, just quite how amazing the impact is. You can see that the mirror that has the backing paint still on it is nicely protected, solid. It's going to last a long time. And I've got the clear glass now and it really does create a really nice design. Now, I do have two areas here where that backing paint went over to the front of the mirror. Not to be concerned, just take an exacto blade or you could take some pumice and just clean up those areas. That should come off pretty easily. And there you have it, a really nice way to have a fine line

Design within your mirror. Like I said, this process works for a simple shape, such as a square rectangle, anything like that. But it can also be done with an intricate piece like this. So I hope you enjoyed this video. If you have any questions about this process, any of the products used, please let us know. Do comment below to let us know what other kind of videos you'd like to see, what other kind of ideas or maybe an inspiration that we were able to spark for you. With this, you'll want to be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you're notified of all of our future videos. And check out our website, angel gilding.com. Thanks for stopping by.