Salt dough and varnishing

This year I am trying to make some salt dough ornaments.  One of the final steps is to coat the ornament with a polyurethane varnish to seal it and prevent it from future mould.

Most of my ornaments are painted in watercolour and when applying the varnish, it's causing the colours to run and dulling the glitter.  Any suggestions on how to prevent this?

One thought was to buy a spray polyurethane and use that as the first coat to set the watercolours.  Then once that's dry, go over it with a good clear wood varnish.  I have no idea whether this would work.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Cait, it's been ages since I did salt dough but I think your train of thought is right. Anything that will avoid touching the unprotected dough is probably the best option. You may even find that the spray is enough, or that layering the spray will do the trick. My mother is asleep now, but I think she did some of this kind of thing a few years ago. If she did, I'll post back.

Post some pics when you're done!

I'm pretty sure that all the ones I've seen done or have done used  a polyurethane layer/layers.

Thank you, ladies.  The books I have on dough craft do not recommend spray varnish as it is too light to fully protect it.  They recommend two coats of wood or yacht varnish, but I can't see how you can use wood varnish on watercolours.  It's ruined a nice batch of lovely painted ornaments. 

I Googled a bit and came across a few references to using the spray as the initial coat and then using the polyurethane. Or using multiple layers of spray.

TBH, though, I haven't seen any of the online stuff suggest using watercolors at all - which is why I'd love to see some pics! It sounds cool!

I have two salt dough books loaned to me by a work mate.  Both recommend water colour for a more realistic look.  I bought some acrylics to start with and truth be told, I found it to be a bit bold and flat, less life like than watercolour.  I am going to look for a spray varnish then coat with traditional varnish.

By the way, the spray varnish worked a treat.  It set the watercolours and I could then go over them with regular and thicker liquid varnish.  Hooray!