Antiquing Mirrors

When I woke up this morning, I thought I would be posting about the peyote stitch frame that I would have beaded around my mirror by now.

Instead,  I went off on a bit of a tangent (*ahem*)  and now I'll be posting about the antiquing of a mirror.

When I sat down at the frame this morning, my mirror looked too new.

I wanted to season it a bit...adding that wonderful antique-mirror-patina that only comes with proper aging.

Like the wonderful effect of this antique mirror hanging in the bedroom of Marie Antoinette at Versailles...



Doesn't it lend an ethereal effect to the image?

Well...I googled "how to antique a mirror" and came up with all kinds of do-it-yourself techniques largely posted by home interior professionals who want the same look for their homes.

Problem was, most of the techniques took a long time and involved muriatic acid and other supplies I didn't have.  I found one person who had used oven cleaner but I didn't have any of that either so I thought I'd try good old-fashioned sand paper.  I mean, that's what is often used to distress wood for furniture...

So I tried that.  Unfortunately, the grit of the sand paper left scratch marks in the glass, even when sanding in a circular motion.

The scratch marks just looked like scratches and didn't give the antique effect I was going for.  So I decided maybe I could fix the scratches on my mirror with the oven cleaner idea?

So off to the store I went.

Well, the oven cleaner worked like a charm.  But where I had pre-sanded, it worked almost too well.

Mirrors are backed with reflective material just below the glass and then coated with a final layer of paint.  The cleaner eats through both the paint layer and the reflective glass layer.  Unfortunately, I could still see my streaks from the sandpaper.

I painted the back of the mirror with metallic silver paint mixed with a bit of black to simulate the antique spotting.

That part went quite well.  Depending on how the light hits the mirror, I think the overall effect of the technique will work.  But I can't live with the big blotch above my head and the spots down the front of my blouse...

So I'm going to have to re-do the whole mirror, targeting more of the antiquing toward the edges of the mirror, using a more subtle, toothbrush-spatter technique.  I'll wait to transfer the image until the antiquing part is successful.

But I'm not going to get to that until Sunday.  Just another reason why it takes me forever to get anything done.

Happy Weekend everyone!