"The Dip and Good Luck Minatures" Topic

Bought a bunch of Good Luck Miniatures from Safari. They make plastic/rubber animals, mostly. The Good Luck line are tiny, about an inch long each. Gorillas, Okupai, Crawling Babies, Alligators, and Manitees. The plan is to make charms out of these to adorn Mardi Gras throw-beads . . .

The Manitee figures were well sculpted with detail, but the details did not stand out at a distance. So I drew upon mnin- painting background and ran them through the Minwax Dipping Process. Beautiful and realistic detail lines came to life, along with a pleasing candy-apple shine.

Unfortunately, it has now been a week, and the figures (full of shiny details) are still tacky and sticky to the touch. I think this is an ongoing reaction between the Polyurethane of the Dip and the rubber (plastic? neoprene?) of the miniatures. Anyone ever encounter a similar problem?

Yes, I bought some vinyl toy animals for Darkest Africa many years ago and painted them. When they failed to dry after several days I stashed them away and haven't had the heart to look at them since. For all I know they might still not have dried.

Yes. They will be tacky forever.

Maybe try brush-on matte varnish on a test figure and see if that does anything?

giving it a few more days. then I'll try either an over-sealant, or perhaps zip-kick on a few samples

I've found it best to just use acrylics on toys. Avoid dips, varnish, spray paints and anything that doesn't thin with water.

My suggestion would be to basecoat and then drybrush to pick out detail.

I have had similar problems in the past.

Use a non-solvent based wash instead of the Min-Wax or Army-Painter type Magic Dip.

This is where "Future" is your friend.

See the Complete Future for many details:
link

You can use many acrylic based clear media to make it, but "Future" is the low cost starting point.
Here is a good write up:
link

Future has been replaced by Pledge FloorCare Finish. Cheers!

Thanks.
Solved the stickiness problem for the hundred or so Manitees which were already dipped by placing them in a 200 degree (Farenheit) oven for about 5 hours. Had to be done in several batches. What a pain! The polyurethatne coating on the surface touching the baking sheet partially stuck to the sheet and partially tore off the miniatures.
I will try magic wash on all future batches of rubber animals, rather than the Dip.