Furniture Decoupage - What Glue/varnish To Use?

[katekoala]

I am trying to 'upcycle' an old piece of furniture for my living room. I have chalk painted the whole table - and want to layer book/magazine pages on the top.... I have tried this, but nothing would stick properly was uneven, and the varnish turned everything dark brown ...

Can anyone help with:

1) What type of glue to use
2) What varnish to use

thank you

[rockyracoon]

I good PVA glue should be good enough with a clear varnish on top, I used to use a B&Q one, has to be clear though. I'll see if I can find it.

[Khandro]

Whatever you do, you shouldn't start by gluing straight away on you furniture. Paint with same paint onto something else and experiment on that. The problem with using something like pva, other than on very small pieces, is that, being water based it will stretch the paper, then when you lay it down it will begin to grip in parts and you will find you have wrinkles in it. A strong mix of wallpaper paste would be better, brushed on both the paper and the the surface; the paper will stretch, dry slowly, and shrink tight leaving no wrinkles. What do you mean by 'chalk paint'? it might need to be sized with a coat of the wallpaper paste and allowed to dry first.
When your pages are all glued down and dry, I would suggest you give it a coat or two of clear polyurethane varnish, first coat thinned 50% with white spirit.

[Khandro]

PS. Given it a little more thought it could be possible that the polyurethane varnish even though clear might dirty the paper particularly any white areas. As I said always use something to test on first. I would not be a bad idea to use a fixative on the paper first. Boots sell a clear non-perfumed hair spray which I use all the time as a fixative for charcoal and pastel drawings, a few coats of that on the dried paper should help keep things looking clean under the varnish.

[TheWinner]

Here is a link for Mod Podge

Amazon.co.uk User Recommendation