Create a gentle metallic finish that pairs beautifully with mirroring.

English Transcription of Video:

Hi thanks for stopping by Angel Gilding I'm Alix and today I'm really excited to show you a way to antique a mirror that you've purchased from a store this is a pretty straightforward process pretty much anybody can do it and we're going to show you step by step just how to get a really nice gentle antiquing effect with just a few products so I've got here an example of our finished piece something that we're going for today and you can see that this is really unique because it's got a gentle antiquing effect sometimes antiquing mirrors can create a really dramatic effect and that can be beautiful too but today I want to show you a way that you can make a really gentle antique mirror now the mirrors that we're going to be working with today like I said I just purchased them from a big-box store and I happen to know that this one is an aluminum mirror and I know that because you can see here I've just kind of chipped away a little bit gently at the backing paint all mirrors have some form of backing paint on them just to protect the mirroring layer and so here at the edges I've just chipped away a little bit so that I can see that it is in fact an aluminum mirror because it looks silver or aluminum on the back I have here an example of what it would look like if it was a silver mirror now this of course doesn't have any backing paint on it and you can see that it's got kind of a light coppery finish most commercially made silver mirrors have a layer of copper to protect the silver on them so I could certainly do a very similar technique with this the products would be slightly different and I'll talk about that in just a little bit but first let's get on with the project so like I said we're gonna be antiquing the mirror which means we need to take the backing paint off so that we can expose that mirror finish and treat it with our antiquing so to do that we're going to be using our multi strip now all the different products we're using today are available at Angel building and I like to use Multi-Strip because I find it's pretty easy to work with and it's more environmental friendly than a lot of other paint strippers and they also know that it's going to remove my backing paint without tarnishing or affecting my mirror layer underneath which can happen with some paint strippers so like I said I've got my multi strip I've got my paint scraper here it's a good way to apply it now you'll see here that multi strip is kind of a gelatinous type substance it's not a liquid and this enables you to gently apply it onto the surface and you don't need to be artistic or perfect in this you're just trying to get a more or less even coat of the multi strip on the surface

okay now you can see I've got a pretty good coat it's not completely even I did want to mention that you can see I am wearing gloves this is a relatively safe product but with all the products we're using today you definitely do want to have gloves on and be working in a pretty well-ventilated area I'm also working on top of some cardboard with some paper towel here that's just to make the cleanup a little bit easier for myself but anyways we've got our multi strip applied it's not beautiful it's not perfect but it's more or less even on the surface and now I need to allow this to sit Multi-Strip is not very fast working but it does do a great job of taking off that paint and once again not disrupting the mirror layer underneath so I'm gonna just let this sit depending on the environment it might take just 30 minutes or a couple hours and I'll just check periodically slightly lifting off the multi strip in an area to see if the paint below has bubbled up once that paint is bubbled up I'll pull the Multi-Strip off using the paint scraper and then I will go ahead and rinse that surface off when that's all done let's come back and then take a look at the actual antiquing I went ahead and let that multi strip take its time do its work it worked pretty quickly for me today and it went ahead and took all of that backing paint off you'll see I just have these spots here at the corner and that's just because there was some rubber feet attached to this glass but that's not going to interrupt our antiquing effect so I'm just going to leave that as is but I can see here that I've got my nice aluminum finish exposed and it's ready for the antiquing process just like before I'm wearing my gloves I've got my cardboard down to protect my bench I've got a plastic tray and a spray bottle with distilled water that's to rinse it off when we're done I've got some paper towels and I've got my remover now like I said this is an aluminum mirror so I'm going to be using my aluminum remover if I was going to antique in this way with a silver mirror with that copper backing that I showed you before I would use the mirror remover both of them are from angel gilding both work pretty much the same way but for today we're going to be using the aluminum remover and I have my misting bottle now traditionally this missing bottle is used in other antiquing ways with distilled water but I'm changing it up a bit here I just poured some of that aluminum remover in here and anytime you're working with colorless liquids you want to make sure you label so I labeled here that this has aluminum remover in it so I can remember what that is inside and the missing bottle is really nice because it's going to give a gentle mist of the remover so aluminum remover is a targeted substance its sole purpose is to eat away or degrade the aluminum finish of a mirror so it's going to be a very pinpointed technique and with a missing bottle I can get a nice gentle effect aluminum remover works pretty quickly so if I were to just pour it on here it would just take that full aluminum finish off which would just leave me with a nice piece of plain glass so I'm going to go gentle with this remember you can always do more but if you've gone too far you can't put that aluminum back on it so I'm going to start out with a real gentle misting and before I spray I like to look at my piece and kind of decide how I want it to look a naturally Antiques mirror is typically a bit more antiqued along the edges so I like to mimic that and spray a little bit more at the edge and then a more light gentle finish on the inside so for right now I'm just going to do some small small sprays here and there and you'll see how quickly it really works okay and really within what was that seconds it's starting to work I can see that it's eaten away at my surface and I want to neutralize the reaction so I'm going to spray it with my water any time I'm working with mirror as I work with distilled water I think it's it's a little bit purer than drinking water and this way I know it's not going to interact poorly with something in a non intended way okay so that's rinsed off and now I can see that it did indeed give me a nicely antiqued finish here I can see my glove through it and I think that that's going to work pretty well for me in fact I don't think I'm gonna even go on another pass I think that I like how that looks now I just need to allow it to dry so as you saw when I started the piece was completely dry so there wasn't any water on the surface and that's what was able to give me that nice gentle misted appearance if the surface had been wet then that water would have interacted with the aluminum remover and given me a more splotchy appearance which can be nice but wasn't my intended effect so I sprayed it while it was dry and now I want to again allow it to dry completely and then we're going to go ahead and apply the backing and this is another way to give some really nice interest to your antique mirror okay so our glass is completely dry now and I'm really liking the antiquing effect if I decided you know once looking at a bit more once it's dry that I wanted a little bit more antiquing I could just go ahead and repeat that step with the misting bottle of the and Aluminum Remover but I'm really happy with this if I hold it up here you can see my glove through it and that shows me what is going to show through on the other side so just like any mirror I do need to go ahead and protect the back if you remember this had a backing paint on it and we need to reapply that backing paint so that our mirror doesn't tarnish and doesn't get scratched over time and this is where it has another opportunity for us to be creative and add some extra layers so if I wanted a more dramatic appearance then I could go ahead with one of my mirror backing paints perhaps my black mayor backing paint and paint it and any of these areas that are clear now would show up black so that would give me a bit more contrast a little bit more dramatic effect like I said at the beginning I'm looking for a more subtle gentle effect and so for that I'm going to be using one of our brand new products and that's our brushed silver glaze now this is a glaze product it's not a paint so it's not going to be as durable as a backing paint would be but it's another layer that it's going to give me some added interest it gives kind of a brushed silver look not quite as reflective as a mirror but not quite as flat as a regular pink nice interesting finish and it's also a little interesting to work with it's a little bit more liquid than you would think of with a paint and so you can pour it on a surface you can kind of brush it but to be honest I find the most success with spraying so I've got the components here for my crown Spray Tool this is something that we sell and it's basically a build-your-own spray can so I've got my canister here I've got my top and I go ahead and connect these two together and I've got my canister this is what I'm going to fill up with my paint so for here I'm going to be using my Brushed Silver Glaze and first and foremost I want to make sure that I shake it really well this stuff settles pretty quickly so before I open it or anything just shake it up make sure that all of those solids are distributed throughout and like I said it's liquid so it's going to flow and kind of go in its own little way so I like to have plenty of paper towels on hand and we have some information on our website about how you can pour it using a stick to guide it and that is very useful I'm going to show you if you don't have that how you can help minimize mess by just having a paper towel here and you just want to pour a little bit into your canister

okay so there we go any excess has gone onto my paper towel instead of my can close this up put that aside now I've got some in here let's screw this back on and then it's going to function just like a spray paint once again less is more you want to start off with a light touch just like before it needs to be in a well-ventilated area which I am in now and you'll just spray away okay so I'm going to let this sit now it's going to cure in about thirty minutes to an hour once again depending on your environment but I can already see if I turn it over what it's done is it's filled in those areas that I had before and instead of it being clear glass or black it gives me this metallic kind of silver look so I have a two-layer antiqued effect and it gives you a nice gentle look once again there's a lot of parameters here that you can control once this is fully dry I may want to go ahead and back that with a mirror backing paint depends on the place that I'm going to be using it and for your particular project if you're not quite sure what to do for the end step you can always reach out to us we're happy to help if you have any questions about this process other processes have ideas for videos you'd like to see be sure to put those in the comment box below be sure to subscribe to our channel so that you're notified of our future videos and check out our website AngelGilding.com we're stopping by [Music]