Thanks, But there was no taping.
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Each design item is cut from a single board. I cut from the reverse side and when done, before removing from the crumb tray, I secure all cutouts with strips of masking tape to hold it all together. (That way I don’t lose any pieces). I flip it over and wipe with acetone or alcohol to remove smoke and burn marks, if the design has any light colored or white items I will also wipe all of the cut edges otherwise they will get charr residue smudged all over the finished project.
While it is still being held all together from the back, I give it several coats of either Rustoleum or Krylon textured spray paint. It has a gritty texture almost like sand. If you use the faux stone paint, it takes for ever to cure. I speed up the curing a bit with a heat gun or hair dryer so I don’t have to wait as long between coats, but the final coat cures at least 24 hours before finishing. Between each coat “pop” the cutouts loose a little so that they don’t stick together to where they pull the paint off from each other later.
When everything has cured enough to handle, I remove all of the cutouts from the “motherboard” and group them together by color and finish on a strip of masking (this makes it much easier to get the same finish on all like objects. Plus I’m less likely to lose small pieces) and paint them their respective colors.
While all of my painted parts are curing I take heavy cardstock (like jigsaw puzzle weight) and do an identical cut plus a backing board to glue everything to. The pieces cut from the cardstock are used to be placed between the. painted pieces and the backing board to give different layers to the colors to add a little depth. I glue the project together with all of the same height pieces together and clamp in my heat press to get even pressure.
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I love the look of the Rustoleum spray, and thank you for doing a write-up on your process! The end product definitely speaks for all the care of the tiny details that you put in!
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Thank you. Sometimes the reassembly and glueing gets a little tedious, but it’s always gratifying to see the end results. Here is a link to one of my posts that has pictures to illustrate the process.
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