Today’s Martha Mondays project was chosen by Teresa at Homemade Iowa Life. The project is homemade mercury glass, from page of January Martha Stewart Living.
I love mercury glass, so this was exciting. Martha makes it sounds very simple (of course! It’s all simple to Martha). The first hurdle was buying what I needed. I bought a very inexpensive glass vase for $1.99. Finding the mirror paint was a problem. Martha references Krylon.com, however there wasn’t time to order this. I scoured local craft and home improvement stores. None 
of them had Krylon mirror paint (or looking glass paint, as it seems to say on the bottle in the photo in the magazine). I ended up buying chrome paint, which is close, but obviously not the same thing. Sigh. I paid $3.99 for a small size can of this.
Mr. MarthaAndMe assisted with this project as always. We wrapped paper around the vase and taped it. Then we sprayed the inside with water and next with the spray paint. We let it sit upside down on a drying rack overnight.
I removed the paper the next morning. It did do what it was supposed to, which is mostly cover the inside but not completely. However, I could definitely tell this was chrome, not mirror paint. If I had had mirror paint, I think the results would have been great. As it is, it’s just ok. So I’ll give this project a thumbs up, providing you can find the correct paint!
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I really admire the way you try all of Martha’s projects and succeed at them, more or less, but surely a lot more than I would.
Thanks for going first on this one. I’m planning to try it myself so it was great to get your input. I guess I’ll order the mirror paint and wait for it before going ahead.
So sorry I wasn’t able to complete the project this week, even though I picked it. Blizzard prevented me from shopping for supplies before I left for my out-of-state work trip. I was wondering if it would be hard to find the paint. I was going to stop at Home Depot to see if they had it. Thanks for being a good sport and trying the project!
I think you will get good results with mirror paint. Let me know how it turns out.
Brette — I’m amazed at your energy and ingenuity and honesty. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but you always make it fun.
I never realized this was called mercury glass. I think it’s great to try different supplies, like you did. You never know what might work better, or supply a different effect.
I didn’t know about mercury glass until a few months ago. I think it has come back into style recently and is suddenly popular. I bought a few Christmas decorations that mercury glass and really like them.
It may not be exactly what you were hoping for, but I think the end result is lovely!
Wow, you are out of control! I love that you endeavored to make mercury glass and didn’t give up when you couldn’t find what you needed!
I love mercury glass and I think your final product looks great!!
Thanks. I might try again if I can order the right stuff online. It was really incredibly easy to do.
I think it looks pretty cool. It’s always nice when things don’t turn out quite as you’d expected, but you end up with something kind of neat and unexpected.
We did this over at Marthable (or, my friends did it and I did nothing besides post about it) if you’re interested! http://marthable.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/marthable-elves-mercury-glass-craft-the-spoils-of-which-i-have-cheerfully-reaped/
Thanks for sharing! They did a really great job!