Easy Marbled Gold Ornament

Technique:  General Crafting

Materials:

glass ornament

gold spray paint

gold mica powder

I had seen tutorials and photos online for faux glass mercury ornaments and thought they looked fabulous.  My own attempts turned out horrendously!  I don't know what I did wrong, whether the spray paint I used was too cheap or what it was.  The instructions all say to spritz the inside of the ornament with water (which acts as a resist) and then squirt in a few bursts of metallic spray paint.  What happened for me was the propellant caused the water to freeze and I just got a nasty mess :(

This decoration was created out of an ornament I was almost prepared to give up on.  I had sprayed the inside with gold spray paint, no water or anything else, just the gold spray paint and swirled it around inside before inverting it over a small jar and allowing the excess to drain, hoping to get the same effect without using the water.  As it was draining, the particles in the paint separated and it dried in a random, blotchy manner, with lots of clear glass showing through. These are the darker gold areas that you see in the photo.

Then I saw a project where they had mixed perfect pearls and water to colour the inside of a glass ornament, and I thought why not use the copious amounts of mica I have lying about.  Micas are shiny minerals, and they provide the colour for lots of products, including paints and cosmetics.  Perfect Pearls is a mixture of mica with a fixative that bonds with water so that when they are mixed they form a water soluble paint, like H20's. 

I have a large quantity of cosmetic grade mica just sitting about the house gathering dust so I tossed about half a teaspoon of dry powder into the ornament and shook it about.  The mica powder is so fine and light that it adhered to the slightly tacky surface inside the ornament and suddenly I had a beautiful two tone gold ornament!  The photo doesn't show the beautiful shimmer that it has from the mica, but it does show you the two tone effect.

So to cut a long story short, to recreate your own, follow these simple steps:

1)  Remove the cap from a glass ornament and spray the inside with metallic gold spray paint and invert to let the excess drain out.  Leave to dry overnight.

2)  Put half a teaspoon of dry mica powder, such as Perfect Pearls, into the ornament and shake about.  Replace cap and hang on tree!