"Mod Podge Gloss sealer for rivers" Topic

Hello all. Just posting some new photos of my river terrain project. Made some additional 2 x 2 tiles to supplement the Citadel Real of Battle Board.

These photos show effective Mod Podge is at creating water effects! Shows the gloss really well. Best thing about Mod Podge is that it's water-based, so you're not dealing with toxic resins or varnishes. Super easy and great results.

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Nice. Inspirational.

very nice – how did you get the ripples to look so tidy ?

John

Can we get a tutorial?… Cheers!

The stuff works pretty well, just don't put it on too thick or it will be cloudy and possibly never clear up (don't ask me how I know that). You can stiple ripples onto the "water" using a thin, wide paintbrush as the stuff dries.

Hello all,

Thanks for the positive feedback.

I will try to post a proper tutorial if I can.

However I will describe the essentials of what I did.

tshryock is right about it clouding up if you put it on too thick.

It really is surprisingly simple. One of the keys to prevent bubbling after it dries is to make sure that you completely seal the river bed with solid coats of craft paint. Also, I used 2 x 2 gypsum panels which I think work better than using sheets of insulation foam. The other step which helps to seal the river is to give the river a coat of gloss varnish after the Mod Podge dries.

I suggest painting the river bed with darker colors rather than lighter ones. Darker colors helps the illusion of depth, but I suppose you could also go for a shallower river look.

I use a one-inch brush when applying the primary ripples, and then a half-inch or smaller when touching up the ripples nearest to the banks.

I poured about six inches of river length at a time. I then spread the Mod Podge until it covers the river bed more or less evenly, about 1/4 or so thick.

The application is really nothing more than a horizontal back and forth dabbing motion into the Mod Podge, following the curves of the river as I work forward. Mod Podge sets up fairly slowly so you have some time to adjust the ripples and work it a bit as you go.

You can adjust how big or how small you want the ripples by just adjusting the width and depth of your strokes.

I'm currently working on some ocean boards using Mod Podge and will be posting some pics of my attempts at creating hopefully realistic sea waves and coastline effects.

Here's some older shots of the same river pieces with some different views. You can see that if you use a darker color underneath it doesn't matter quite as much if the Mod Podge does end up clouding up somewhat. If you think about real running water, it's not perfectly clear. You have foam and swirling currents which break up the light hitting the surface.

So in reality you don't want a perfectly clear layer of Mod Podge, the cloudiness can actually help in achieving the effect of a running river with real currents.

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Here is an another example of Mod Podge/gloss medium being used to create river effects. This fellow came up with the brilliant idea of using a sheet of clear acrylic as the base of the river and putting gloss medium over it to create the ripples effects. I absolutely love that he used the empty space beneath the acrylic sheet to create the depth of the castle moat. The only difference here is that he used Liquitex gloss medium as opposed to Mod Podge, but the products are very similar in terms of application. In addition, he uses a craft stick to apply the medium. I found a paint brush works better and is faster, but he achieved excellent results with the craft stick nevertheless!

Final note is that he mentions in the tutorial that he is trying to achieve the effect of stationary moat water as opposed to flowing river water, which is why he used the stick to create smaller, more circular ripples.

Fantastic engineering! Fast forward to the 11:25 mark to see the application of the gloss medium.

Love this;
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Looks great! Thanks for sharing. I've been meaning to upgrade my river sections…

One other thing I've seen done on railroad layouts (and for shallower streams, obviously) is to get a flat-bottomed rock to put in the stream and put the gloss around it, stipling behind it to represent the disruption to the flow. Always wanted to try that one out.