Experiments in Decoupage

There are a lot of decoupage mediums out there, from simple watered-down Elmer's Glue to the more pricey Royal Coat. My decoupage medium of choice is Mod Podge. It comes in a lot of varieties, spreads easily, dries quickly but not too quickly, and can be built up into a nice protective coat. But, there are other options out there, and in the interest of broadening my horizons and exploring beyond my Mod Podge world, I decided to give this a try:

It was $4.99, which is cheap enough to give it a try... and I did just that last night. And I have to say, I'm not sure what to make of it. I got the gloss formula, which is the only one the craft store was carrying at the time, then found myself a small box I wouldn't mind experimenting on, painted it black with silver accents, printed out an image, and gave it a go.

The first thing I noticed about Aleene's Instant Decoupage was the consistency... which is roughly about the same as one of the more undesirable symptoms of a cold. It didn't spread terribly well, and seemed to have a bluish tint to it. Not good signs.

Even worse was how badly the paper bubbled under it. Now, you're going to get bubbling with just about any medium you use, but some bubble worse than others, and this was definitely worse than Mod Podge. The directions state that you should wet your fingers in water and smooth the bubbles out, which may work great with, say, magazine images, but I work with images straight from the good old home printer. When you add straight water to that, the colors tend to bleed. At the very least, they're going to smudge as you rub those bubbles out. Again, not a good thing.

Finally, there's the dry time. Mod Podge has a dry time of 15 minutes to half an hour, depending on weather conditions and assuming you didn't pour it on. As of right now, a good fifteen hours later, I'm still not sure it's entirely dry. I know it's supposed to be Gloss, which means a nice shine, but...

That's almost a WET shine. Which is not always a bad thing - in fact, it can be desirable to have that polished sheen to a piece of wood. The problem here is that I'm not sure how much of it is the intended look of it and how much is because it's actually not DRY yet. It's got an almost damp feel to it, along with the feel of wood that's just been oiled. If it hasn't fully dried yet... well, definite strike against it in my book.

I'll give it a few more days and see if it is a curing problem after all, but so far, I am not impressed. I'll probably end up coating it in Mod Podge anyways.

As for the box itself, here's a better look at it:

I think, if I can work out the sealer problem, that I'll finish it off with a lovely red suede paper interior and put it up for about $10 in our shop. We'll see how the Aleene issues go, though.