Colored bottles, an exercise in varnish

A fella on the Hirst Arts forum was showing off his latest projects and he had these wonderful bottles on the crates.  So I pestered the heck out of him until he gave me all the details.

In a nutshell:

1. Glue beads onto a straight pin
2. Base with white acrylic
3. Paint with ink
4. Varnish

Well, I've got beads.  The trick is finding the correct size and shape to look like bottles.  Luckily I had been working on trying to make bottles much earlier in the project and had a bunch of beads from the local dollar store.

For whatever reason superglue isn't liking me these days.  I just can't get it to work.  I think the house is too dry for it to adhere so I may have to experiment with that but not right now.  So I used regular tacky glue.  While this fills in the gaps between the beads so they look more cohesive it takes longer to dry and I seem to end up with crooked bottles.  Those are going in the back.

Two coats of white craft paint make the proto-bottles a nice smooth white.  It also reinforces the glue bond and fills in the spaces even more.  Since I'm trying to look like they're one unit this is a good thing.

On to the ink.  I do have Reaper inks and haven't really had a chance to use them much.  This was a great opportunity.  It took two coats to get it looking smooth.  I probably could have done a third coat but didn't for two reasons.

1. I didn't want the color to look too opaque
2. I'm lazy

I let those dry really well.  Because I had other things to do.

On to the last step - varnish.  The originator used three coats of Future Floor Wax.  If you haven't used this stuff in your terrain and other miniature making adventures you're really missing out.  Great gloss finish and tough as nails.  Downside is that it is really thin so if you're looking for something to stick on the surface you're going to have some issues.

So begins the Great Varnish Experiment.  The idea is to give the bottles a decently thick layer of clear so the eye is fooled into thinking the bottle itself is clear.  I decided to try out the layers of Future vs. straight acrylic craft varnish (gloss).  The craft varnish is much, much thicker so it sticks to the surface and leaves a thicker result.  At least, that's my hypotheses.

Without further ado, here's the current state of the experiment:

Colored Bottles Varnish Test

Let's go left to right.

That bottle is actually painted with two coats of Reaper Clear Plum.  The Clears are pigment in a clear base.  So I thought I would give it a try.  That's with one coat of the acrylic varnish.

The odd blue-green bottle is two coats of Reaper Clear Viridian and again, one coat of acrylic varnish.

The deeper green bottle is two coats of Reaper Green Ink and one coat of acrylic varnish.

The lighter purple bottle to the right is two coats of Reaper Purple Ink and two coats of Future.

Personally I like the hard gloss of the Future.  But the acrylic varnish gives a thicker clear coat.  So I think I'm going to combine the best of both worlds and do two coats in the future:  one of the acrylic and one of Future.

I was wondering how the Reaper Clear colors would turn out.  They're much more opaque than the inks but have a richness that will work for more pottery-like bottles.  They still have enough of a clear feel that they might work nicely.

So tonight I'll hit everything on the board with one last coat of Future.  Then I get to start painting caps and such.

The glossy surface is also just crying out for me to try out decals as well.

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