Part three of six: PFC Crustals

English Transcription of Video:

Hi, thanks for stopping by Angel Gilding. I'm Alix,

And today we are continuing on with our new Silver and Ticking series. We are now into part three, which is PFC Crystals. Our first video, we introduced the process of antiquing a mirror and worked with Baso. Our second part was all about l S gel. Four different ways to do that and today we are going to be delving into two different ways to use PFC crystals to create an antique mirror. So as always, we're working with our six inch square single string glass here, and we'll be doing those two different examples and with any antiquing process, we do recommend that you keep really good notes. These processes that we're showing you today are just meant to be an inspiration, kind of a jumping off point. So when you go to do the process and trying different things out, just make sure that you take some good notes so that you know how you created something for when you want to reproduce it. But without further ado, let's jump right in to working with PFC Crystals to make a new silver mirror.

Every mirroring project, of course, is going to start with cleaning. And this is no different. We do want to make sure that that glass is completely clean and we're also using our Cerium Oxide to polish the glass as well. It's really important that it's cleaned so that you don't have some kind of antiquing effect that's actually just from piece of glass that just hasn't been cleaned properly because of course that's not something you could recreate. So I'm just rinsing off the glass here with the distilled water, getting it all ready. For the mirroring process for today, we are using our pouring chemicals, so I'm pouring on the tin for silver there, letting that deposit on the glass for 30 seconds, rocking the glass, allowing that tin to coat fully after the 30 seconds. I do want to make sure that I rinse that tin off really well. Once again, controlling those variables, making sure that all the excess tin is off the glass. 
I'm measuring out my pouring silver chemicals here. Now we use about 10 milliliters of each of the solutions for this size of glass, but all the calculations and information is on the website. If you're wondering how much to use for your particular piece, just measuring them. And then I'm boxing the chemicals, which just means combining them, mixing them together so that when I pour the chemicals on the surface, they have already combined. And for our first piece, we are going to rock the glass the full time and we are going to allow it to deposit the full five minutes. We're really just making a standard mirror at this point. We're going to allow it to silver completely and then dry completely before we go in with the PFC crystals. 
Once my piece is fully dry, I'll put it back there on my tray and then I'm going to take my PFC crystals and really easily just sprinkle them on here. You can see that they're sitting on top of the surface of that dry silver. So I'm going to take my misting bottle that's got some distilled water and then I'm just misting it lightly to help the PFC dissolve a little bit and then set a timer. I'm going to let this sit on the surface undisturbed for about five minutes. Here's a closeup shot. You can see how it is starting to eat away at the silver a bit, but then you can really see it here at the finished piece. Now that's the silvered side. You can see some kind of color changes there. And this is the front surface. Of course, I had some silver there run over. I'll clean that up later and onto the second piece. Now this piece we're also going to be doing with pouring silver, but the process is a bit different. So we'll start out the same with our tin for silver, getting a nice even coat of our tin for silver, allowing it to deposit those 30 seconds and then rinsing that really well.
Once I've got my piece fully rinsed, I'm going to pour over the silver and chemicals and I am setting my timer to start. But like I said, this process is going to be a bit different. I'm allowing the silver to deposit for about a minute, and in that time I'm going to dissolve some of my PFC crystals. I like to take a one gram spoonful of the PFC crystals and mix it into about 30 milliliters of the distilled water. Of course, this is something you could get ready ahead of time. I just decided to do it while I was waiting that one minute to allow that silver to start to deposit and the PFC will dissolve completely in the water.
You can see that my silver has started to turn on the glass. It's still pretty dark. It's not a full silvering yet, but I'm dipping a cotton ball in to my PFC solution and then dropping it onto the wet silver. So that is going to start eating at the silver that has deposited, but also we're not removing the other silver, so it's still depositing in some areas. But then the PFC is working to limit the silver deposit in other areas. So I'm going to check my time and I'm going to let it sit. I'm not going to rock it. After about four minutes, I am rinsing it off, making sure that all of the excess silver and that PFC solution has been rinsed off. And you can see there, it almost looks like it made complete holes in the silver. There is actually a very thin layer of silver there. So I'm going to apply another layer of the silvering solutions, pouring them on the glass. And this layer, I'm actually going to just let it sit and deposit for about three minutes, and that's going to build up that silver. And you can see here how it did get a bit darker in those other areas that looked like they were pretty much bare glass. Now we have a slightly thicker layer of silver rinsing that all off, making sure I'm happy with that. And now you can see once it has dried

That there

Is indeed some silver in those other areas, but it's a darker, thinner layer of silver and that's really going to show up when I go to paint it. So of course I do want to paint these and to really emphasize this technique, I did choose to go with the black backing paint and that will come through a bit on some of those antiques areas. Really make it pop

Just like that. We have two beautiful antique mirrors. I think personally, PFC Crystals is probably my favorite product to work with because it's just so easy and there's so many different ways that you can use them. As you saw, we just changed up a few different things about the process itself, not the products, and got such different dramatic beautiful results. Definitely something I encourage you to try. You can purchase the PFC crystals on their own, or you can order them as part of the new Silver Antiquing kit so that you can try out all the other products that we're showcasing through this series. In our next video, we're going to be delving into SNC crystals and different ways to use them. If you have any questions about this process, what we covered today, or anything else related to antique mirrors, certainly leave those in the comment box below. And I do encourage you to subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications so that you're notified when that next video comes out. And check out our website, angel gilding.com. Thanks for stopping by.