Epoxy Pigment Guide | What is a Pigment in Resin Art ?

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1. Definition of Pigment
2. Pigment vs Dye | What’s the difference?
3. Collection of Pigment

Definition of Pigment

A pigment is an intensely coloured medium which used to colour other materials, also a finely ground insoluble colorants. They alter appearance by changing the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. Materials that humans have chosen and developed for use as pigments usually have special properties that make them ideal for coloring other materials. A pigment must have a high tinting strength relative to the materials it colors. It must be stable in solid form at ambient temperatures.

-------Wikipedia

Pigments are usually applied in coloring paint, inks, epoxy resin, fabric, cosmetics, food, and other materials to create a paint or coloring agent as coloring agents,in the meantime, as corrosion protection and water barriers. Most pigments used in manufacturing and the visual arts are dry colorants, usually become a finely ground insoluble colorants. This powder is added to a vehicle, a relatively neutral or colorless material that suspends the pigment and gives the paint its adhesion.

Pigment vs Dye | What’s the difference when used in epoxy resin?

A distinction is usually made between a pigment and dye, the pigment is insoluble in epoxy resin (resulting in a suspension), it’s created from all kinds of natural substances. Whereas a dye is either itself a liquid or is soluble in epoxy resin (resulting in a solution), most dyes are colored chemicals and not stable in light, it will fade quite rapidly when exposed to light. Both are the branch categories of colorant which is a substance used for coloring a material, also known as coloration matter or coloring matter. Pigment are while dye. Pigment selection for epoxy resin depends on its cost and requirements of the pigment’s physical properties and attributes.

Pigment Collection by Physical Properties

Basically we can sort pigment into 3 collection according to their physical properties: Liquid Pigments, Solid Powdered Pigments, Solid-Liquid Mixture Pigments. As to illustrate more specifically, we will start with Let’s Resin epoxy resin pigment.

Liquid Pigments: Liquid Resin Colorant, Alcohol Inks

It's some sort of resin pigment colorant which existed in the form of liquid. Liquid pigment can be applied in any vehicle and mixed to create any shade or colour. It widely used by resin artist s for colour dyeing.(Alcohol ink is a special liquid pigment)

Powdered Pigments: Mica Powder, Pigment Powder

Powders pigment won’t stick to the vehicle, it needs some medium to adhere to the vehicle first. Mica powdered mixes well with varnish and bring a sparkly outcome with shiny flakes for your vehicle. Powdered pigments tend to be matte and leave little sparkly in the finished vehicle

Paste Pigments
There is a special texture pigment out there, its existed in the status of paste, they impress us with its high concentration and solid color effect, you will definitely need it when creating something requiring high color saturation.

Pigment Collection by Effects

The effects are different when used in epox resin due to their different property, rather than distinguishing the physical properties, most of people want to know the effects that these resin dyes can turn out to be. In this section we will distinguish our pigment from the effects they can bring to resin art, so that everyone can better know which effect you prefer to have.

Let's go with a simple way, we just sort it into 3 way:

1. Regular Effect Pigment

(P IC2:Concentration & transparency of regular effects pigment)

Regular Effect Pigment can simply dye the resin color. It usually appears in a pure & solid color ↓

2. Particular Effect Pigment

Glitter Pigment Dye, Resin Dye, Mica Power, Metallic Peal Pigment Powder

(PIC1: Concentration & transparency of special effects pigment)

Particular Effect Pigment: can simplely dye the resin color and bring some extra sparkles/shimmering/colorshifting. It will not only dye the color, can also add glitter or color shifting effects, if you are a big fan of gorgeous final work, don't miss it ↓

3. Alcohol Inks

Alcohol Inks: A special liquid pigment which is popular among resin artist referring to the choices of epoxy resin dye. It maintains the property of opacity, while still retaining the ability to be transparent when placed in front of the light.

There also has 2 kinds of alcohol inks in the epoxy resin market, with/without white alcohol inks. In the case that without white alcohol inks, you can simply drop the alcohol inks upon the vehicle you use. This is how we use our Macaron alcohol inks without white inks ↓

Some alcohol inks needs to be further processed by white inks. in the case of our 14 color alcohol inks which contains 5 bottles of white alcohol inks in supply. White(Deeper) can push the colored inks sink further and deeper than White(Nomal), put one colored ink layer first and cover it with white inks, repeat for 3-5 times(the layer may decided by the final effects you want). The more white inks you use, the deeper colored inks will sink. Drops 5-7 layers of alcohol inks evenly and then you can get a rainbow color resin ↓

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1 comment

Joan Betz June 21, 2020

I bought some molds from you last week and I love them,but I am wondering if you have and kink of .svg to go with them please so I can cut out designs to put on the molds that I make?