Hi there

I wanted to make a red planet playing table for 40k and OPR and I had in mind that parts of it should look like dried out lake beds or salt flats so I needed crackling paint or paste for that. This comes with two problems:

1. I'm not going to buy enough GW crackle paint to cover a table because I'd not be able to afford rent if I did
2. GW crackle paint makes very small crackles and I wanted them to be a bigger scale

So I went and searched for tutorials on how to make my own that would be cheaper and modifiable but I had a really hard time finding anything.

Because of this, I thought I would share my experiences here so if somebody has similar goals as me, they might follow this guide or take it as a start and do some tests on their own to find something that works for them. I'm also happy to hear from others that might have some experience with making their own crackle paint.

As a start, I found this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QppkO9IyUOU and I liked how his end product looked so I went and bought some diatomaceous earth and went on to mix it in different rations of water and glue but I could only ever get very fine cracks that I assumed would fill up with paint rather quickly.

These are the best results I got with that mixture:

https://preview.redd.it/56iqhhk06frb1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5eb34d7f9d741a0c1fbdb039895e0e35473dba8f

https://preview.redd.it/czcneqd16frb1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3f7a660891e3635a222965bd386e68c2a5d21944

If you like these results, you can use the rations on the plates as a guide, it's water to glue to diatomaceous earth.

I then went through a whole process of addatives and rations and different glues and whatever to try and get bigger cracks:

https://preview.redd.it/cy6hg8i96frb1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6d7535344a6b3d1f9d084206f457114d63db904

Until I landed on a formula that makes pretty big cracks, even with a pretty thin layer of paste, is solid when dried, pretty cheap, thick enough to be sculpted but can be thinned out to the point of being pourable. These are the (quickly and badly painted) results I got with that mixture:

This was thinned down and poured into the ditch.

This was applied to a very rough base so the cracks are more irregular than they would be on a flat base.

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The trick I ended up using was making a past out of starch, water and salt that loses a lot of volume when drying and making this paste should be your first step:

Step 1: Make starch paste

For the paste, mix 1 tablespoon of corn starch and 1 tablespoon of salt into 1 cup of water and heat that up in a pan or in the microwave. Heat it until the starch gelatinizes and you get a very gloopy mixture. Watch out, this will be very sticky and super hot so you don't want to get it on your skin.

Add water to this mixture until it becomes the consistency of toothpast and for every tablespoon of water you add, add another pinch of salt. The salt is there to inhibit bacterial growth because we've essentially made pudding. It will dry out when you use it and not much will be able to grow in it once dried but we don't want to take any risks so it should be suuuuper salty when it's done.

This mixture will thicken up when cooled completely so let it cool and then come back and add more water and salt to it until you have a workable consistency.

Step 2: Mix cracke paste to desired consistency

Take 2 parts of your starch paste and add to that 2 parts by volume of diatomaceous earth powder and 0.5-1 part wood or hobby glue. If your glue is more flexible when dried, add a bit less and if it's more brittle when dried, add a bit more.

This is your crackle paste ready. You can now add different things to it:

• Water or alcohol (if you want it to dry faster) to thin it out, make it smoother or even pourable, it all works.
• Paint or pigments if you want it to have a certain color. Just don't use too much paint or replace some of the glue with it. The paste is also quite easy to paint once dried.
• Sand or gravel if you want it to have some texture.

Step 3: Apply, let dry, paint

Apply your past with a spatula, a spoon, your fingers, whatever you want. If you want the cracks to be more irregular, make the surface you spread your past on a bit bumpy. Porous surfaces can give you some bubbles in your paste but they are hardly noticeable.

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A note on diatomaceous earth:

It is used in poultry farming to inhibit mites in coops and stuff so you can get it for pretty cheap online. And please wear a mask and goggles when working with it. It's a very fine abrasive powder that will attack mucus membranes when it comes in contact with them.

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I hope you found this guide helpful and as stated above, I'm happy to hear from others on how they managed to get some good DIY cracke pastes going. In any case, I had a lot of fun experimenting with mine.

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