Sealant Comparison: For When You Just Can't Get MSC

 Army Painter Matte:

• It has very little tooth, so it takes a lot more layers to achieve good color with it.
•  It is also prone to snow flaking. 
• It is good priced. 
• I will update this post as I finish a face up using it. It does hold up really well to handling, which I would assume for a sealant used for miniatures.

Testors: If you have to use something other than MSC, this is what you want. 

• Testor's gets a lot of crap, but it's pretty good. It has good tooth.
•  It does tend to appear more yellow, and if you use too many layers it can get cloudy. 
• For the price and availability it is a good choice. 
• It also seems to get a bit dirtier than MSC. 
• I can get Testor's at my local Walmart.

Plaid: Please, please, please do not use this. 

• It is gummy, collects dirt, doesn't hold color well, and just looks unfinished. 
• It is very, very cheap and available at a lot of places so if you have no choice, go ahead.
•  It is safe on resin dolls.

Modge Podge: I have heard conflicting reviews about this, so here is my experience:

•  It is great for joint areas in full body blush, not for face ups. 
• It's far too thick to even consider for a faceup. 
• It's sturdiness means it's pretty damn difficult to remove, but it does appear to be safe for resin as far as I can tell. 
• My centaur's hooves are varnished with this. 
• It gives them a bit of a glossy touch and they haven't chipped yet, compared to other areas of her body blush.

Next sealants I want to try:

Volks' sealant

Citadel Matte Sealant

Just my initial thoughts on them. I will provide some pictures of face ups done with these sealants at a later date.

Thanks for reading and happy collecting!

Face Up Tips: Lips

As you know, I'm still working on improving my techniques so I thought I'd share what I've learned. Here is my trick for lips.

I'm addicted to shimmer powders.

A little background on this head: She's a recast Volks SD16 Kira. Her original owner tried to blush her to match a yellow skin body, and despite all my scrubbing, I can't completely remove it. [Edit: I have since removed it and redone the faceup.] So, this is making one eyebrow look really goofy. Please ignore that for the sake of the tutorial.



 

1. Block out the face up colors. On the lips, dab some color in the middle on the bottom and on the sides of the upper lips. (For a more solid lip, dab color over the whole thing).

Face Up Tips: Eyebrows

I'm still learning and improving my face up techniques. I'm not the best or anything, but I have figured out some things that help me with my face ups.

I <3 shimmer powders!!!

A little background on this head: She's a recast Volks SD16 Kira. Her original owner tried to blush her to match a yellow skin body, and despite all my scrubbing, I can't completely remove it all [edit: I finally got it off and redid her faceup]. So, this is making one eyebrow look really goofy. Please ignore that for the sake of the tutorial.

Here's my technique for eyebrows. Update: Scroll to the bottom of the post to see recent eyebrows done with this method!