Using Varnish With Your Decoupage Artwork
A) A regular paint roller is an alternative to brayer. Rollers are offered in a variety of 'naps'. You can use either foam rollers or the more familiar cloth rollers. You should use a very tight nap roller.
B) Now you can put your pictures on the object. To leave some surface portion to show off, just leave spaces or you can cover completely by overlapping the pictures.
C) To get an antique finish, simply mix the varnish, add a drop of raw umber paint. Next, coat the object with the gloss varnish and let it dry.
D) To finish it off, you can sand your images from some areas. If you coat your object with an oil-based varnish, your background will display some different colors. A blue color will appear a little bit green, white will look like an off white. You get the idea.
E) After you sand your picture, you can paint a few portions of your image. Use a paintbrush for that or china graph pencils. For very little color, use 00 paint brushes. You will notice that the china graph pencils blend very nicely because they are oil based.
F) Be sure when you apply the varnish that you don't get any air bubbles. If you see some, use a sharp blade, make a tiny slit, then using a toothpick with glue on it, paste it back, to make it smooth. If white patches appear, color them using the china graph pencil or your paint brush. To finish it off, cover with Liquitex. You can find Liquitex in any first-class craft store.
G) If you don,t let your varnish coats dry correctly, you get an orange peel effect. You can fix this by sanding and adding more coats of varnish.
H) You can find instruction sheets that explain how to cut the prints and how to assemble them. You don't really need advice because you can see by looking at the picture and using your imagination to figure out the areas you want to keep in the background and those you want more prominent.
I) If you use an embossing tool, you can get some first-rate 3D effect to your prints. Start at the centre of your cut piece and move towards the edges in a circle. If you want a more embossed look, just stretch the paper a bit more.
