I had been reading about Looking Glass paint by Krylon and how it gives a faux mercury glass look, which is all the craze on Pinterest these days. No wonder…it is beautiful.
So I decided to try it out and see if it really works. It did. It’s not a perfect match for mercury glass but the look I got was good enough for me. Here’s my experimental project. The vase was one of those clear vases that most people have 10 or 20 of somewhere in the house from having received fresh flower arrangements. If you don’t have 10 or 20 of them you can buy them for .50 at most thrift stores. The hydrangeas are from our yard this summer. They’re my favorite.
Now that I felt confident in using the paint, my next project was to paint a couple of lamps for DD’s bedroom. So off I went shopping at every thrift store I drove past. I wanted a basic ginger jar lamp and didn’t want to invest more than $10 for both lamps. I got these lamps for $2.50 each at Goodwill. Score!
Obviously, I had already started working on the lamp on the right when taking the picture above. I was amazed at the ease of using this paint. The finish I got is more of a mirrored finish rather than mercury glass but I don’t care. I saved a bunch of money, considering all similar lamps that I’d found in discount stores like TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, etc., were a minimum of $40 each! Mere pennies to those at higher end stores where similar lamps were $150 or more. Just not going to do that. I paid a WHOLE LOT LESS for both lamps completely redone.
Not too shabby. Don’t you love the lamp shade? I definitely didn’t get it at Goodwill.
Next, I was on to painting a Moroccan design on a cheap rug that I already had. It’s just a basic commercial grade rug that had only cost $20. I figured if I completely messed this project up there wouldn’t be much of a loss since I’d been using the rug for the last year to cover some broken floor tiles in our kitchen. (Kitchen remodel in near future, thank goodness.) To have spent the last year in our kitchen and to have been so inexpensive, the rug has held up very well and cleaned up superbly. (Thanks to my dear husband and his power sprayer.)
The stenciling idea was inspired by a few projects I had seen on Pinterest. I’m too cheap to pay $20 for a stencil. So I found the design I liked online, printed it, cut it out using plastic cutting board material, and made my own “stencil.” Then I found the center of the rug and eyeballed placing the center of the “stencil” on the center of the rug. I then traced around the “stencil” with wet chalk. Then, I painted over the chalk with white fabric paint, doing a little at a time.
Here it is in progress.
And the finished project…
You may notice some “smeared” places and that is just the chalk, which wiped away with a damp rag. The rug definitely has its flaws but, for a first try and to be as inexpensive as it was, I’m not going to worry about them.
I found that sponging the paint on using a paint dauber, rather than a paint brush, was much easier. (That’s what I call it, at least…a little stick with a round sponge on the end.) I worked on the rug a couple of hours over three evenings; so the entire project took around 6 hours. Considering these rugs cost $59 and up depending on the quality, I was quite happy with the result. My expense was a $2 bottle of white paint and a $4 package of daubers. And the rug, of course, I already had. Not bad! And here’s the semi-finished room that these projects that have kept me so busy have gone into. I still have a bit of decorating to do but I like how it’s shaping up.
Hot Mama in the Kitchen 