How to Color Epoxy Resin: Pigments, Dyes, and Inks
Clear resin is beautiful, but let's be honest — nobody stops scrolling for a plain transparent pendant. Color is where resin gets fun, and it's also where a lot of first batches go sideways. Wrong colorant, too much of it, or something water-based snuck into the mix, and suddenly your piece is sticky three days later.
I've colored resin with just about everything at this point — proper pigments, eyeshadow, one very regrettable bottle of food coloring — so here's what actually works, what each option is good at, and the mistakes that cost me real batches.
The one rule before we get to the fun part
Resin cures through a chemical reaction between resin and hardener. Anything you add is a bystander to that reaction — as long as there isn't too much of it, and as long as it doesn't contain water.
Water is the deal-breaker. Food coloring, watercolors, most craft inks — they're water-based, and water interferes with the cure. My first month with resin, I dripped food coloring into a batch because it was what I had in the kitchen. The color looked gorgeous going in. Seventy-two hours later the piece was still soft enough to dent with a fingernail, and it never fully hardened. Straight into the garbage, mold and all — I couldn't get the residue out.
So: no water-based anything. Everything below passes that test.
Mica powder — start here
If you're buying one colorant, buy mica. It's ground mineral coated with pigment, it gives that pearly shimmer you see in most resin jewelry, and it's very hard to mess up. Too much mica makes your piece opaque; it doesn't stop the cure.
A quarter teaspoon per 1 oz (30 ml) of mixed resin is my usual starting dose. Less gives you a translucent pearl tint, more goes toward solid and metallic-looking.
Mix the powder into a small splash of resin first and mash out the clumps, then add the rest. If you dump powder into the full cup you'll be chasing streaks for five minutes. I cover the details in my mica powder guide.
Liquid pigments — made for the job
These are pigment pastes suspended in a resin-compatible carrier. Let's Resin and Limino sets are everywhere in the US and Canada, they mix in smooth with zero streaks, and the colors are rich.
The catch is dosage. Because they blend in so easily, it's tempting to keep squeezing. Keep all colorants combined under about 6% of the total weight of your mix — past that, the cure suffers. That number sounds abstract until you've made a bendy coaster; here's exactly how much pigment is safe.
For most jewelry pours, 2–3 drops per 1 oz (30 ml) is plenty. Seriously.
Alcohol inks — translucent and a little wild
Alcohol ink moves through resin in a way nothing else does. It stays translucent, it blooms and feathers, and it's what people use for petri-dish art and those sunset-fade pendants. Piñata (by Jacquard) and Ranger are the two brands I see at every Michaels and on Amazon.ca.
Two or three drops per ounce, no more. Alcohol slows the cure just like water does, only gentler — a few drops are fine, a heavy pour is not.
One thing I learned the slow way: some ink colors fade in direct sunlight over months. I had a sepia-and-amber suncatcher hanging in a south window, and by the end of one summer the sepia had gone almost ghost. If a piece will live in the sun, mica and pigments are safer.
Resin dyes — for the stained-glass look
Transparent dyes tint the resin while keeping it fully see-through — light passes through like colored glass. Castin' Craft makes classic ones you can find at Michaels and Hobby Lobby. A single drop goes a long way, and they're lovely in shiny molds where the light can really move through the piece.
The improvised stuff
Acrylic paint works in a pinch — keep it under about 1 part paint to 10 parts resin, and expect a matte, slightly muted result. Old eyeshadow is basically pressed mica; I've crushed a broken palette into resin and gotten colors I couldn't buy. And chalk pastels shaved with a craft knife give soft, dusty tones.
None of these are as reliable as proper pigment. But when it's 9 pm and the idea won't wait, they'll get you there.
Browse my handmade silicone molds — every one of them has seen a few experimental color batches.
Mixing order that saves headaches
Mix your resin and hardener completely first — full time, scraped sides, all of it (how to mix epoxy resin if you want the routine). Then split into cups and color each cup. Coloring before the resin is fully mixed is how you get cured pieces with soft streaks: the color hides the unmixed hardener from your eyes.
And add color in small increments. Resin colors deepen slightly as they cure, so stop at about 90% of the shade you want.
Which colorant for which project?
Pearly jewelry: mica. Solid, repeatable product colors: liquid pigment. Flowing art effects: alcohol ink. Stained glass and suncatchers: transparent dye. That's the short version — the long version, with side-by-side comparisons, is in alcohol ink vs. mica vs. liquid pigment.
What's the weirdest thing you've ever colored resin with? I've heard everything from turmeric to printer toner, and honestly some of them work better than they have any right to.
— Nikolai