Constitutionally Modern DIY

Summer break is over and DIYs are back!  Kicking it off with a doozy: some ancient Japanese wisdom etched onto a mirror.

Asai Ryōi, a 17th century Japanese writer, explained the time’s prevailing obsession with impermanence and fleeting beauty with the following:

“Living only for the moment, turning our attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maples; singing songs, drinking wine, diverting ourselves in just floating, floating; caring not a whit for the poverty staring us in the face, refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current: this is what we call the floating world.”

I figured what better way to reflect the floating world philosophy (a crushing appreciation for beauty in what’s ephemeral, flecked with doses of indulgent vanity and the pending corruptibility/doom of everything) than to etch this text into the mirror I check myself out in before walking out the door every day.

You need:

• Mirror
• A print-out of the text
• Vinyl letters (I needed 2 packets of ½" letters)
• Glass etch cream
• Foam brush
• Tweezers or small pliers
• Painters or artists tape and scotch or masking tape
• Some old plastic bags (for protecting parts of your mirror)
• Old rags/t-shirts/cloths/towels (that you never want to see again)
• Handkerchief or medical mask
• Rubber gloves

Costs = $30: 

• ½" Helvetica vinyl letters = 2 @ $4.25 each
• Glass etch cream = $16.64
• Foam brush = $1
• Painters or artists tape = $3.99
• Everything else = free or already available around the house

Want to see the steps?

How to:

• After cleaning your mirror well, tape off what you want to protect from the glass etch cream.

• I cut up some plastic bags to help protect my nice frame during this process.

• You need a life-size print-out of whatever text you want to use so you can be sure that spacing works.  In order to get the dimensions that fit my mirror I had to do some literal cutting and pasting onto a background sheet.  I messed around with font size until figuring out that Helvetica Neue (bold) 46 pt font is very closely equivalent to the ½" lowercase Helvetica vinyl letters I bought on the internet.

• With the print out as your guide, tape off the upper boundary of where you want the etching.  I used more plastic bags to protect some of the upper part of the mirror, just in case.

• Ok!  Time for adding those little vinyl letters one-by-one.  A tweezer or similar tool is critical for accurate placement (or maybe I have exceptionally clumsy digits?).  Let your print-out guide you – within word letter spacing, the spacing between words, the spacing between lines, etc.  I kept stepping back and looking at it from afar to double check myself.

• A mere 3 hours later…

• Now for the sucky part.  With gloves on and a mask/handkerchief protecting you, pour a thick layer of glass etching cream over the mirror surface.  Use a foam brush to even it out.  Try to get it as thickly even as possible for best results. Leave on for 5 minutes (per bottle instructions).  There’s no getting around it: etching cream is smelly and toxic, so hold your breath and be careful not to make skin contact.  

• At this point I used old cloth scraps (messed up socks, t-shirts, towels) to scrape off the thick cream, then discarded them in a trash bag which I immediately removed from the apartment.  The easiest way to remove etch cream is to wash the surface with water, but I opted for the mop-up because: a) I was worried a full-on shower would ruin my mirror frame, and b) I felt bad putting the cream in the water supply (any better off in a landfill? prob not).

• And here’s how it looks hanging in the hallway.  The top edge turned out unintentionally wavy – but for me it was a happy accident since it’s so reminiscent of Japanese rice paper.