heehee

i was told hairspray over time makes things yellow

so i use body spray somtimes

but i guess thats no help to you cos itd smell of body spray then .

if you want to be cheap try different brands of hairspray. some will smell, some will never get hard, some will get yellowish. some may work...
if you want to be sure, ask your local dealer for a good fixative. this will neither smell, nor pull dust, nor get yellowish. highly recomended! costly but it works.

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let´s have a look
_{... at my homepage or at my gallery}

I both tried hairspray and it was horrible, it turned everything opaque and the whites yellow, then tried semi-brilliant fixative and it fixes the paint but does also leave the whites opaque T_T i don´t know what to do either

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"When I despair, I think that there have been tirans and murders throughout history but in the end they always fall. Always"
Ghandi

I use hairspray on soft pastels wich works just fine for me, maybe it will work on oil pastels too. Just give it a try

I'm a professional framer and conservator - never use hair spray if you plan on the piece lasting more than a couple years. Hairspray often contains oils that will discolor your work after drying, acids that will cause the piece to yellow and the paper to deteriorate after just a few years, and the dispersal system isn't as fine or even as an actual fixative, so its much easier to get splotches, glossy patches, and runs. Not to mention, it really doesn't have a very high concentration of acrylate (i.e. the "glue"), so you have to use more hairspray to get the same bond you'd get from an artist's fixative - meaning you'll go through more hairspray and spend more money in the long run. It might also dry sticky if the oils are incompatible because the hairspray will never fully dry - thus becoming a magnet for dust etc. You might not think you want to preserve anything now - but when five years goes by and your work starts looking dingy and yellow, you might come to regret it. People come into my frame shop all the time wanting me to fix such pastels, and there's nothing that can be done to reverse it. Buying "archival" grade materials doesn't simply mean your works going to last a hundred years - cheap art supplies fade, crack, peel etc. after only a few. And if you plan on selling the work, its really dishonest to use inferior materials like hairspray.

Finally, its really not much more expensive to buy a decent fixative. An $8 can of fixative will easily outlast four $2 bottles of hairspray. You can also buy an atomizer and use varnish - which isn't necessarily cheaper - but keeps you from buying redundant art supplies if you work with oil paints as well. Several brands also offer smaller cans for much less - around $4 I think.