A guy at the prop house told me the secret to fake ice cubes is glycerin and water, not resin.

He showed me a jar of them he made for a bar scene, saying 'resin yellows under the lights in two hours, but this mix stays clear for the whole shoot', and now I won't use anything else for close-up drink shots.

3 comments

3 Comments

piper1752mo ago

Seriously? Glycerin is a huge pain to clean up. That sticky mess will ruin a glass prop faster than resin yellows. I'd rather swap out resin cubes a few times.

foster.wade1mo ago

Hated dealing with sticky glycerin too so I switched to using a thin layer of vegetable glycerin mixed with distilled water in a spray bottle. Just spritz a little on the glass instead of dunking or painting it on. It still slows down the evaporation on ice props but isn't so thick that it ruins the surface. A quick wipe with rubbing alcohol at the end of the shoot clears it right off without any residue. For props that aren't meant to look pristine I also tried a cheap hair gel diluted with water and that was way easier to clean up than straight glycerin.

ninas702mo ago

Okay but the one time I tried glycerin it somehow got on my keyboard and my space bar was sticky for a month. Felt like I was typing through syrup, maybe I'm just a mess magnet.