This is a technique I enjoy using – lightly brushing mica powder directly into the silicone mould before adding the resin.
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But what is Mica powder?
Mica powder is a very fine, shimmery powder that is often used to add colour and sparkle to resin projects. It comes in a huge range of colours, from soft pearly shades to bright metallics and deep, rich colours.
For resin crafting, you’ll usually come across mica powder in little pots or packets. You can mix it directly into your resin to colour it, but that isn’t the only way to use it. One of my favourite techniques is to brush the powder directly onto the inside of a silicone mould before pouring in the resin.
This can give you some lovely effects – and that’s exactly what I’m going to show you in this post.
For my projects I use Lets Resin Mica Powder, they have a large selection of wonderful colours, if you are just starting out on your crafting with resin journey, you may have bought this Resin Starters Kit from Amazon please note this kit is for epoxy resin not UV resin part of this kit includes packets of mica powders, like these in the photo below. There is of course another starter kit specifically for UV resin you will find the link for this here on my tools and materials page
How To Add Mica Powder Directly to a Mould
So first you need a nice clean, dry silicone mould, a dry soft bristle paint brush – one for each colour you are planning to use, as you don’t want to be cleaning them in between and be dipping a damp brush into your dry mica powders.
As always with colouring resins you only need a little mica powder.
Just lightly brush the powder into the mould where you want the colour to be, in this image I have already added gold mica powder and I am just adding some red to the other half of the mould.
When you have finished brushing the powder in your mould – there will probably be some excess loose powder. Just turn your mould over and gently tap the excess powder out.
Adding UV Resin
Now your mould is ready for you to pour your UV resin – because the mould I am using is quite deep I prefer to layer my resin – I half fill it, and cure before filling to the top and doing a full cure, this helps to ensure the resin does cure right through. If you’re only using a shallow mould then one pour and cure will be fine.
Lets watch the video I made of the procedure now :-
As you saw in the video there was a twist at the end, because I had filled the mould with clear resin, the mica powder gave an almost translucent effect when held up to the light –
so to overcome this I added a black pigment to the back of the piece, unexpected problem now solved! but this did result in the overall colours changing from red & gold to a rich burgundy & gold and I have to say I am really happy with the result.
So yes! you can indeed add your mica powder directly to your mould which can create a metallic or pearlescent finish on the surface of the piece and often gives a much stronger shimmer than mixing the mica into the resin itself. However as you have just seen what happened to me- you may like to add other colourants to the resin its self – maybe even adding a little mica powder to the resin pour, or simply apply a pigment or paint to the back of the piece.
I would suggest that you have some fun experimenting with colours, I added a black pigment paste on the back of my piece, but maybe if I had added white pigment the end result may have been different! so don’t be afraid to experiment to find what gives you the result you are looking for.