How to write on a steamy mirror

We've all seen those movies where someone has written a message on a mirror that only becomes visible when it fogs up. As easy as it seems, there's a trick to doing it right.

The first think people try is just taking their finger and drawing on a steamy mirror. This causes words to appear immediately. And, next time you take a shower you'll be able to see a ghost of the words on the mirror. Not much. Just a different pattern in some of the condensation. Completely invisible if you haven't put your glasses on yet.

To write a message properly you need soap.
Get the soap wet so a respectable amount will come off on your finger when you touch it.
Write the message you want on the mirror.

At this point the message is quite clear. Anyone can read it. You need to get the soap off of the mirror to keep it a surprise.

For my example I drew a heart on the mirror.You need to remove the soap in such a way that you don't smear it all over the mirror. That would ruin the message. But if you put tissues of some kind over your finger and trace the lines of the text you should be fine. It gets hard to do after a bit because you can no longer see exactly where your lines were.

In my case, I wanted the heart filled. To this end I wiped from the outside toward the middle. You can see from the streaks in the picture just how much the soap can smear. That's why it's so important to stay in the lines when working with text.

You can tell in this picture that I didn't get the mirror fully cleaned. I could have spent more time on it, but I'm a lazy slob. Luckily my mirror always has spots and streaks on it.


Then, after my girlfriend had her shower, I had a mirror that looked like this.