Friday Guest: Maury from A Fabuless Home!

Happy Friday!  The weekend is nigh!  Hallelujah!  I love my kids dearly, but I have been so accustomed to them both being in school and having 15 hrs a week to myself.  This year with all the changes and the timing, we made the decision to keep Emmy home, where I have been working with her.  Of course, that also means that I have no free time.  It's kind of taking a toll on me since I was so used to that free time.  And I for one am not even more excited about the weekends, just so I can have a little me time, besides of course my early morning walks.  Anyhow, today, I have a fabulous guest for you, Maury from A Fabuless Home!  Maury is wonderfully talented, and thrifty- two of my favorite characteristics! :)  I am in love with her Fall walnut wreath!

Today she is here to share another awesomely gorgeous and thrifty project!  Enjoy!


Thank you so much Cassie! I can’t tell you how excited I've been about this post. For months, I’ve been trying to figure out which project or room I was going to highlight. Cassie’s so amazing and I wanted to live up to the crazy high bar she’s set! I really, really wanted to give you all a glimpse into my almost finished dining room. I've been working on it for weeks and had hoped to finish it up by now, but no such luck. How about a little sneak peak before we get moving on the good stuff?



Before:



Not-Quite-After:






I should have taken the after picture during the day, which is why it looks so much darker than the “BEFORE” picture. I still have to make curtains, add fabric to the chairs and art on the wall, but at least it’s presentable now! I guess you’ll just have to stop by my blog once a week a day to see the finished result (he he). Until then, I want to share my newest obsession with you:

MERCURY GLASS!

It’s all over MY PINTEREST right now (click on the pictures to be taken to the source):














Oh my… can’t you just see so many uses for decorating with these pieces? I especially love the candle holders. When the candles are lit, it gives such a beautiful glow. Then I realized that some of these pieces are not real Mercury Glass! They are DIY Mercury Glass and I knew I had to find the perfect piece to try this out.






Then I saw this beauty at my in-law’s house, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. They were going to give it to Goodwill, so I snagged it. I’m not much of a brass girl, so I pulled out my trusty Oil Rubbed Bronze by Rustoleum:



I painted the base and then got to work on that glass. Krylon’s Looking Glass spray paint actually gives a mirror like finish to any piece of glass.

This stuff could get me in to some serious trouble. I’ve only been able to find it at Hobby Lobby so far, so that’s a good place to start if you want to find some.




Warning: I have a series on my blog called “What I Learned.” I figure that there are about 3,366,836 tutorials for every project on the web. So instead of being redundant, I talk about my experience with my projects. In the end, it actually turns out to be how I screwed it up and then how you can avoid it. So here we go with:

What I Learned about DIY Mercury Glass

1. For an all over mirror finish, you’ll want to just spray it directly onto the glass. Spray the inside or the back of the glass, so that the front is still shiny and looks like a mirror.
2. For the mercury glass look, most tutorials tell you to spray the glass lightly with water first and then with the looking glass paint. This caused the glass to be very wet and actually caused a lot of drips, which I didn’t like.
3. I wiped it out to start again, but that actually left a lot of paint still on the inside, which actually was good. In the end, it created a layered effect which was more authentic.

   4. So instead of spritzing and then painting, I tried painting and then spritzing. I did a full coat of the paint, let it dry for 20 seconds or so and then spritzed with water. Don’t stress when it looks like this:





Yep, that’s my camera that you can see in the reflection. That’s how close to a mirror this stuff is!

The paint dries very quickly so the hazy patches are still slightly wet and the mirrored patches are dry.You want to spritz it when there’s still plenty of hazy patches.




So remember the BEFORE: 






and AFTER!








and now with the candle lit… I love the glow it gives off!






This was a super simple project that took me less than 20 minutes to complete! The best part is you probably have plenty of glass things sitting around that you could make into mercury glass. Here are some other ideas:

• A cluster of glass vases turned into Mercury Glass and then filled with candles for a centerpiece
• Clear glass plates turned into Mercury Glass for a holiday table setting
• Clear lamps (like THIS ONE) would look just like the lamps from my Pinspiration above.

Have fun with it! I’d love to see all the things that you make with this. Thanks so much to Cassie for letting me hijack her blog today! I hope you learned a little something and will hop over a visit me at A  Fabuless Home!

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