I put everything into resin Acrylic does work, but start small and add in if you feel you need more. It definitely changes the working flow!
I’ve also tinted with food coloring - regular and gel - and alcohol ink. Food coloring is the hardest, to be honest, because it requires a LOT of stirring, otherwise you can get pigment bubbles.
Resin both fascinates and terrifies me. I don’t do well with time constraints. I bought some, though, and it’s sitting there on my shelf taunting me, so it’s inevitable.
I was thinking of using some of my powdered wood tint, but they want you to mix it with alcohol first and I didn’t know what the alcohol would do to epoxy resin.
Nice design, I’m working on some earrings and necklace designs, and get frustrated at filling in the little holes and such because it drips and oozes. Any tips you can share?
The alcohol is a liquid carrier that soaks into the wood and carries the powder with it. For epoxy you would just throw the powder directly into the epoxy - start with a little, a very little bit of powder goes a long way once you start stirring the epoxy.
You can also use mica (amazon has a ton of variety packs of normal mica). I’ve been thinking of getting some dual color mica from justpigments, painting a background black, throwing the dual color mica into epoxy (it says it needs a black background to really show off the color shifting effect - that purple/blue effect depending on what angle you are looking at something), and seeing how that turns out. I’ve been using normal mica that I just randomly got off Amazon and it works great in epoxy though.
I used it on my first projects and I just feel like it was a little easier to deal with.
The most important thing, and one that I’ve forgotten sometimes, is to seal all surfaces before pouring the resin. Clear coat any wood or paper, because once the resin soaks in, it creates micro air bubbles, and to get rid of those you need to hit them with a heat gun and it’s just extra time consuming.
Speaking of which, I need to go heat gun some projects right now, because I forgot to clear coat
I don’t really have a prefrence for clear coat, though I guess I personally have had good luck with Rust-Oleum products doing what I wanted them to do. The can I’m using right now is whatever clear gloss my husband had in his workshop.