# Aging wood with Ghastly Glaze



## Revenant (Mar 17, 2007)

This weekend while helping some friends set up their haunt, Bill tells me he's not happy with the front entrance to the haunt. Structurally it's awesome... built entirely with pallet wood so its nasty old & rotten looking, but he wasn't digging the dry, bleached-out look. That's great for an old west haunt like Wyatt's or a Ghost Town, but theirs is more of a gothic haunted house. So I stained it for them with something I call Ghastly Glaze. And it looked MUCH better.

I learned this working at Silo-X last year. You take dark shellac and mix some *flat* latex paint in it. The water base paint doesn't really mix into the solvent based shellac; it forms a suspension. So instead of a nice clear tinted stain, you have a tinted stain that's cloudy and murky looking. Good for making wood look old and stained and worse for wear. And on non-wood stuff it's great... since it's clear you can get great color washes, better than with just watered down paint. Washing it over flat latex paint gives awesome results; the paint soaks it up and gets amazing depth of color, especially if you've already stippled or shaded some highlights and texture shadows on it with paint. I used it that way on the creeping ooze tendrils at Silo, and on my monster-mud blob/amoeba from last year's contest. And on metal look stuff like silver or brass, it makes great tarnish.

Remember, FLAT latex. If you use satin or gloss, something in it reacts with the shellac and makes a solid congealed mass of useless gum.


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## Doomsday Cult Leader (Mar 21, 2007)

Good info! Thanks, Rev!


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## Monstermaker (Aug 4, 2008)

Hey Rev, can I get the recipe/ratio of your ghastly glaze......perty please?


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## Revenant (Mar 17, 2007)

I just eyeballed it; you don't want to go 50/50 because that would be too much paint. You want it mostly shellac because the whole point is to keep it transparent/translucent. I'd say the stuff I used on the guts/gore and alien oozes last year was up to almost 25% in spots. Mix some paint in until it just starts to go opaque in your mixing cup and try that. Then if it's too painty, add shellac, and if it's not tinted or dirty enough add paint. No science to this one, just make a mess and have fun!

Oh BTW only mix small amounts as you go; this doesn't have a shelf life. It'll curdle after awhile.


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## Haunted Bayou (Feb 16, 2007)

Sounds nasty, which is probably why it works so well. LOL!


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## Monstermaker (Aug 4, 2008)

Thanks Rev...much appreciated.


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## ithurt (Jun 23, 2008)

i would like to say thanks also, worked great on new wood.








the colors are deeper and more interesting in person.


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## beelce (Jul 21, 2007)

Thanks Rev....one more tool in the arsenal...


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