I’ve been looking for ways to make different supplies to paint, stain, and weather my models without breaking the bank. I think it’s fun to use household things or cheap materials that you wouldn’t otherwise combine to create a medium you can use in your model building.
My two most recent projects were weathering related. One of them is complete and I’m very happy with the result. The other one is a current science experiment and should be completed in the next couple days. Hopefully, the kids or the wife don’t think my containers sitting around are left-overs and pitch them into the trash!
Project 1: Custom Wash/Stain with Chalk Pastels & Ink
This was a super simple and very affordable way to create some custom colored stains for my next project.
What you’ll need
- Sealable Container (I used a small mason jar)
- Isopropyl Alcohol – I used 91%
- Calligraphy Ink – I used Higgins Sepia Calligraphy Ink
- Eyedropper / Pipette if your ink doesn’t come with a dropper
- Chalk Pastels
The process for this is really quick and really the longest part of this is testing out the homemade stain to see if you want to add more ink/chalk to determine the perfect color you’re looking for.
The Steps
- Take your container and fill it about halfway with the isopropyl alcohol. I chose to fill it only halfway in case I wasn’t satisfied, I could dump it out and restart without wasting much.
- Add a few drops of the ink, mix it up. Repeat until you reach the desired darkness of the color you want.
Next, I took my chalk pastel powder (I used brown) and added a few small scoops into the ink/alcohol mixture and mixed it up. - Before I added any more chalk, I tested it on a piece of scrap basswood clapboard siding by simply brushing it on and seeing if it’s what I wanted.
- I wanted my stain to have more depth and color variation, so I added a little more chalk pastel and mixed it up/tested it. PERFECT!
- That’s it! I had gradually mixed up my ink and chalk to achieve an ink wash that was exactly the color I wanted and it only cost me a couple dollars.
Not only was this custom stain very affordable and fun to experiment with, I have enough materials and extra containers to make about a dozen more custom stain colors.
In the sample piece of clapboard siding below you can see what my stain looks like. I applied it a gradient of layers. The lightest 1/3 of the piece of basswood was one layer of stain, the middle was two coats of stain, and the darkest was three coats of my custom stain.
I’m very happy with the results!
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