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i just used gw purity seal and got the white powder on the figs, anyway to correct this?

More information, please.

Temperature, humidity, that kind of thing.

These can often cause the problem.

Often, stripping it is the best solution (and not using PS).

Varnish it with a brush on varnish over the white mist - that should clean it up in most cases.

can you post a picture?

What temp was it while you were using the seal?

You can try a gloss clear coat, and I believe theres an article on the Paint Corps blog about this (sorry, dont have a link).

Also, this often happen when the can wasnt properly shaken, or the first bit of spray in the tube is the culprit. The first bit of spray in any session should be to the side on a test spot, it clears the tube of any left over/poorly mixed spray.

The white powder is humidity trapped in side the varnish.
As others say try paint on gloss clear coat.
When this happend to me with my Dwarf Deathroller (for Blood bowl) recoating didnt work.
Since it was a metal model, I tried something that actually worked.
I painted on a very very small amount of acetone one the white areas. The acetone dissolved the varnish and released the humidity. Acetone is very volatile and if you put on a small amount it will only dissolve the varnish before it evaporates. If you put on too much acetone it will dissolve the paint aswell.
Only try this as a last resort.

Can anyone recommend a varnish that's better than GW's that's available in the UK?

How necessary is it to varnish your models anyway? I've never bothered, but I feel as though I should probably start! I presume there are better varnishes than GW's though.

Vallejo and Army painters varnishes has served me well, since GW stopped selling the dull cote.
The paint job can chip if you dont protect the models with varnish. Metal models are extra sensive, and I always put 2 layers of varnsih on metal models, plastic I only use one layer.
Humidity is your worst enemy when you spray varnish on your models and it seemed that GW dull coat was very sensitive to humidity, thats why they stopped selling it (according på my local GW shop.)

Also if you put on too much varnish it can do it as well.

cerebaton wrote:Can anyone recommend a varnish that's better than GW's that's available in the UK?

How necessary is it to varnish your models anyway? I've never bothered, but I feel as though I should probably start! I presume there are better varnishes than GW's though.

To tell you the truth, what you buy doesn't always seem to matter as much as environmental conditions. I bought a $2.50 can of (spraypaint sized) Krylon clear matte from Wal-Mart, sprayed it on miniatures inside a climate controlled room, and it worked just fine. I've done two guys so far with zero ghosting. One of them came out a tiny bit shinier than the other, but that's because I got it on that one too heavily.

As far as necessity, I'd say a big yes for pewter miniatures, and a probably not as much for plastic. I always get paint rubbing and flaking off of my pewter stuff, but then again, I'm also known for nights where I can't seem to keep ahold of anything for more than 30 seconds, so I have to repair lots of miniatures.

@a94marbo

Do you know how GW plastic holds up to acetone? I've not tried yet and I have a few plastics I'd like to strip, but I don't want to reduce the figs to plastic puddles.. Looking for something better than rubbing alcohol and I'd prefer something I already have lying around at home.

Acetone eats plastic, for ghosting/milky varnish I can recommend it as alast resort as I described above. For stripping plastic models, just use the search tool. There have been countless of threads about stripping plastic models.

I've had this happen before on a few models as well.

Annoyingly, usually my better paint jobs.

the most success I've had when I've encountered this is to go with the brush on gloss varnish.

I then went back over it with a spray matt.

It usually works. Doesn't always though.

Best advice is to try one mini if you can to see if it works.