First and last trial with MagicGlos on paper mosiacs

For my first experiment with MagicGlos, I decided to try and replicate my early brooch design CF002 using paper mosaics.

I painted some thin card in the same colours, cut them into the shapes and stuck the pieces onto some thick solid black card for the brooch base, with matt acrylic medium. I trimmed the brooch base to shape and coated the whole piece again with matt acrylic medium, to ensure that the stuck on pieces sealed well onto the base.

When dry, I used the MagicGlos to coat each of the stuck on pieces. It was easy to apply straight from the bottle, using a cocktail stick to get the resin into very tight areas. It created a great domed effect on each piece (just as I hoped), no problem with air bubbles and it cured quickly (10-15 minutes) in the sun. It looked really good but, sadly I found, as stated somewhere in the directions, the resin did not adhere to the acrylic medium because it is water-based. The cured resin pieces just slipped off, when you touched them, leaving a sticky patch underneath.

I tried spraying the piece with some spray varnish I had (which I guessed was not water-based by the smell of it) and redid the MagicGlos. This time the cured resin did stick to the surface, however, I only flexed the card base slightly and the resin pieces peeled off. This was really disappointing, as I did not feel confident that it would be durable enough.

MagicGlos was designed for use on polymer clay – perhaps I should try that?

In the end, I used Envirotex Lite resin on this trial piece. Although it stuck to the surface fine, giving a hard, glossy surface, it is not as viscous as the MagicGlos. I tried very hard to keep the resin just on the coloured pieces but it still spread and the distinction between ‘mosaic piece’ and ‘grout’ has been lost.