Sunday, November 4, 2012

Silas WIP - Adding Water to the Swamp!

Instant Water? Lets hope so.
As I posted earlier I was planning on using Envoritex Lite for the water effects in the swamp base. Well today I decided to finally pull the trigger on using it. It's a 2 part system, and you need to mix an epoxy resin with a hardening agent. Then once mixed, you can just pour it on to whatever you are varnishing.


Of course, Envirotex is naturally clear and since we are talking about swamp water, I needed something a bit more murky. After reading up on how to add color to it, I decided I'd try out using the green mix I used for the swamp floor. So I took the little paint pot of it and scraped a bit out onto a clean stirring stick and whipped up a batch of the stuff.

Looks a little too green in the cup, but it's pretty transparent still on the stick.
Once this was mixed up I started to pour the water into the base. This was slightly nerve wracking, since if I screwed it up all of my work is lost. I folded the edge of the cup to make a spout and slowly dripped some onto the base. Then with a toothpick I spread it out a bit. This was repeated a few times until I had even coverage. Once it set for a few minutes, following the directions, I blew on top of it to pop any air bubbles left in it. This is the end result...

Water poured!
I didn't notice until after the fact that one of the reeds broke loose while I was pouring and is now laying on the bottom of the swamp floor. At first I was slightly disappointed, but now I think it adds a little character to it. And I'm glad the stone in the water turned out, it looks better than I was expecting it to, not bad for a piece of scrap Styrofoam, eh?

Apparently it will take up to 7 hours for the resin to dry hard on the surface and up to 72 hours for it to cure fully. I guess that means I have to keep myself from touching it, moving it or anything else. I'm still debating on if I want to add a lilypad on top of the water. We'll see about that.