Lee DeRaud
10-30-2009, 5:20 PM
I've been fooling around lately with some cheap mirrors, engraving the backing off and then painting them with spray lacquer. Every glass mirror I worked with worked fine. Then I tried some scraps of mirrored acrylic I had laying around. Same settings worked for the backing...so far so good.
Painting was another story. The designs I was using were very detailed (e.g. Aztec calendar), and it almost looked like the paint was wicking up out of the engraved areas and huddling on the (unengraved) peaks like rats fleeing a flood. After it dried it looked ok from the front, but from the back, holding it up to the light, you could see dozens of bright specks where the paint hadn't covered. So far I've tried the spray lacquer, spray enamel, and brushed acrylic artists' paint and the only thing that gives anything close to full coverage is the artists' acrylic applied unthinned (about halfway between honey and toothpaste), which I suspect is just forming a floating skin that (1) will flake off and (2) won't hold any kind of tape or adhesive.
I've got some artist oil paint to try next...probably try rubbing it on with a rag, but I'm hoping someone here knows the right answer.
Painting was another story. The designs I was using were very detailed (e.g. Aztec calendar), and it almost looked like the paint was wicking up out of the engraved areas and huddling on the (unengraved) peaks like rats fleeing a flood. After it dried it looked ok from the front, but from the back, holding it up to the light, you could see dozens of bright specks where the paint hadn't covered. So far I've tried the spray lacquer, spray enamel, and brushed acrylic artists' paint and the only thing that gives anything close to full coverage is the artists' acrylic applied unthinned (about halfway between honey and toothpaste), which I suspect is just forming a floating skin that (1) will flake off and (2) won't hold any kind of tape or adhesive.
I've got some artist oil paint to try next...probably try rubbing it on with a rag, but I'm hoping someone here knows the right answer.