This project took several days to complete, mostly because of the drying times in between adhering the Crackle Paste and Caulk and Paint to the MDF Board. I first started with a block of 1" foam insulation and carving the cracks where the lava flow will be. Here I just taped the foam board to the MDF board to manage where the Paintable Caulk will go to form the lava.
I started making the lava from the middle out by dabbing pretty good sized globs of Paintable Caulk to the MDF Board
Where the cracks are in the middle of the board, the lava blobs came out perfect. I started out making smaller blobs and making sure to dip the end of the Caulking Gun in the blob to make the tips of the lava to come to a point. I later realized that the bigger blobs don't look right, some are too big near the edge of the board. I will later go through a second time and place smaller blobs in between the first set of blobs to even out the board a little
It's better to use smaller blobs of caulk for drying purposes too, this board took 3 days to dry enough to paint.
In this step I took the foam board off and started applying Crackle Paste on the edges of the foam board where the lava will be. Be sure to prime the whole foam board before applying the Crackle Paste and paint or else it will have problems adhering to the foam board.
Apply a generous amount of Crackle Paste with a putty knife, I should have gone thicker with the Crackle Paste to get the cracks and fissures bigger. This took two days before the cracks started showing up, probably longer the thick er you apply the Crackle Paste.
Now for the first coat of paint, use a bright red color, the brighter the better. I used interior house satin finish latex from the local hardware store, thinned down quite a bit to use in the airbrush. The color i used is Stadium Red from the Ralph Lauren color collection. Make sure what you are painting is white or else the red will be rather dark, and you want this thing to glow, right? I used white caulk, but if you only have clear caulk make sure to base it white before applying the red.
