Green glues.

Three sample glues from Nine Lives Products

A couple months back I blogged about Nine Lives Products‘ Kickstarter project.  Nine Lives makes glues from used styrofoam and plant products.  Super eco-friendly, recycled, green, keeps stuff out of landfills, you name it! I was one of the project backers and they were successful, and for my thank you gift I received samples of three glues.

I experimented with the Tile and Ceramic Glue – glued some plastic fork pieces together as I didn’t have anything ceramic that’s broken at the moment that I could work on.  I found this glue worked very well.

I was very interested in the paper-oriented glues as I’m hoping to make my refractured watercolors more eco-friendly.  Over the last 24 hours I’ve been experimenting with two of those glues.  I use glues or glue-type substances in two stages – attaching the paper pieces to the surface, and creating a touchable, splash-proof surface. I prepared some watercolor collages, and in my first experiment was to glue one down with School Glue.  It was easy to work with, spread well, smelled vaguely citrussy and cleaned up nicely with water.  I did find that I needed to go back and peel and re-glue some areas, and weight down the whole collage overnight.  Perhaps this is a side-effect of using 140lb paper, which for those of you who don’t paint watercolor, is like a thin cardboard.

Glu6 as a glaze

This afternoon I tried Glu6, which is very thick, and has a strong tangerine scent.  I first used it as a surface glaze on the collage I’d glued the prior afternoon, and then tried it as a glue.  Glu6’s thickness made it harder to brush, though I liked what I first saw in the layer of glaze – the brush marks settled out to a slightly wrinkled surface, almost like undulations on a lake.  I set this aside and went to glue the second collage.  Both collages I’m putting on Ampersand Artist Panels.  Again I find it necessary to weigh it down and at this point, about an hour later, it hasn’t stuck the paper to paper areas, though the papers sticking directly to the gessoed board seem to be well attached.  When I went to clean the brush I found that it’s not a water-cleanup glue – it’s waterproof.  Fortunately I also paint in oils so I had turpentine to hand otherwise I would’ve killed my gluing brush.

Drying to a dull sheen

At the time of writing the glazed collage is drying nicely – to a dull finish, but also sinking into the paper more than I had anticipated.  It’s rated for semi-porous surfaces and I think watercolor paper is just too porous for this glue.

Sadly it seems that neither Glu6 nor School Glue would be the best choice for my usage.  School Glue does glue the papers down well, but the need to weight down overnight limits it to small collages, so I will use the sample on those.  Glu6 and Tile and Ceramic Glue will be put to use around the house.