GHOST IN THE MIRROR

10.21.07

No, it’s not a crack about how pale I look when I gaze in the mirror most mornings… This is an honest-to-goodness Halloween crafty that’s been cooking away in my brain for a few weeks now.

I was inspired by a much more complex and costly Halloween idea that is used in some haunted houses. In that setup you use a two-way mirror set in front of a black box. Small lights are installed within the parameter of the box and an object is placed inside, behind the mirror. When the lights are turned on you can see the object or image through the mirror. When the lights go out it looks like a normal looking-glass.

I wasn’t quite ready to take the time and money needed to create that elaborate of a project, but I did like the idea of a ghost in the mirror. I decided to make a very low-tech version.

The first stop was to the local craft store to see what they had in the way of mirrors. Lucky me! This gem was less expensive than a mirror of the same size with a frame and it gives me twice as much to play with since the wood needs finishing too!

Most craft stores carry these inexpensive unfinished wood items like this one, but you could also try garage sales and thrift stores for even cooler finds.

The first step was to work with the mirror.

I determined that the best way to make a convincing “ghost” would be to use an airbrush through a stencil to create a very light rendering of a woman’s face. So after a couple of sketches I had a simple image that I traced onto a sheet of stencil material. Using a sharp X-acto knife I cut out the stencil and mounted it on some construction paper so I wouldn’t accidentally over-spray the stencil onto the mirror. To get a fuzzy image with no sharp lines I made sure the stencil was not laying directly on the mirror. I used a couple of DVD cases to keep the stencil a couple of centimeters away from the mirror.

Here’s where I learned a lot about painting on mirrors. Evidently the paint I bought at the craft store that is specifically made for glass does NOT work in an airbrush, even watered down. Oops. So I used a pearlized white airbrush paint instead. The only issue is that the airbrush paint I have is in no way permanent on glass. This was both a boon and a curse. I had to re-paint several times after I had smudged the “ghost” image with my hand while I was doing some later painting. However, the paint came right off with some glass cleaner which gave me the chance to perfect my airbrush/stencil technique. For now this mirror will have to be totally “hands-off” when it is finished and hanging on the wall.

I realize most people do not own airbrushes. One alternative would be to free-hand paint a face on your mirror with some glass paint or even acrylic paint and a brush. Another idea would be to make a stencil with paper or stencil material and using a sponge lightly fill in the stencil with paint. That could possibly give the “ghost” a very cloudy and insubstantial look. To soften up any part of the “ghost” use a sponge that has been lightly sprayed with a glass cleaner and gently daub around in a random pattern. You have to do this while the paint is still wet or you may have some very distracting dried paint flakes all over your image.

Next, I wanted to give my mirror an aged appearance. Using some sponges and a mixture of black acrylic, pearlized acrylic medium and water I gently sponged on the paint around the edges of the mirror. Keeping some sponges damp, but free of paint, I was able to fade the paint out as it got closer to the center of the mirror. Looking back it probably would have been easier to do the aging first and the “ghost” second. Oh well, you live, you learn!

With the mirror finished the next step is to work on the wooden frame portion.

I wanted to make the furniture portion look old and weathered, but still elegant so I did some internet searching of antiques. After getting a basic idea of what I wanted I got out my Sculpy clay and went to work making the 3D reliefs. Sculpy is a relatively cheap polymer clay that can be found at almost every craft store and baked in a home oven.

I used a combination of a clay extruder gun, an X-acto knife and my hands to fashion the individual designs. To make it easier to I traced the frame onto a foil-covered baking sheet. This eliminated the need to compare each design against the wood background before transferring it to the baking sheet and potentially distorting the designs. After the clay reliefs came out of the oven I glued them to the wood with an epoxy.

Finally, I got to do some painting. Although blue is not usually my first choice in furniture colors I thought a light silvery blue would give this piece a more antique feel. The paint I used was your basic craft-store acrylic paint in Wedgewood Blue, a pearlescent white, and a little black to grey out the color a bit.

After the frame was painted and had dried I decided to try a crackle finish to give it an aged appearance. I had never worked with this crackle medium before so I wasn't exactly sure how it would work out. After I painted on the crackle finish and let it dry I found that the effect was too subtle for my taste, even after two thick coats, so I had to take the painting one step further.

To make the crackling more dramatic and to give the frame an even more aged look I mixed black acrylic paint with water and painted the whole piece before going back over the frame with a paper towel to soak up the excess paint and water. From there it was just a matter of letting the paint dry and putting the mirror back into it's frame.

I'm happy with the result and all-in-all I can say the experiment was pretty successful. Maybe next Halloween season I'll try my hand at that more complicated build, but for now I'm satisfied with my ghost-in-the-mirror.

-Lyzard