Using resin for DIY crafts has become a popular trend in recent years. Many people use resin to seal wood crafts, create homemade jewelry, encase custom tumblers, or even create decorative bowls, plates, and boxes.
On its own, resin is a completely clear substance with no color added. It is fully transparent, allowing you to add little details inside such as sequins, dried flowers, and more.
To achieve a colorful look with your resin, you would need to add a pigment of some kind. Colorants made specifically for resin can be a little pricey, though. It’s tempting to use something many people already have around the house, like food coloring.
So, can you use food coloring in resin? You can use food coloring to dye resin, but your colors won’t be vibrant and you’ll have to use gel or oil-based food coloring instead of the more common water-based food coloring. For best results, use resin colorant or mica powder to dye your resin.
The type of food coloring you use will depend on the type of resin you’re working with, either epoxy or UV resin. You can use food coloring using our recommendations below, or you can stick with dedicated resin colorants to create the best finished look.
Epoxy Resin Vs. UV Resin
Before we can dive into the best ways to color each type of resin, it’s important to know how the main two types of resin differ.
The biggest difference is that epoxy resin cures on its own without any aid. It can speed up the process to use heat and increase ventilation, but you can always leave epoxy resin to cure on its own and it will still get there.
For UV resin, it must be exposed to UV light or sunlight to cure. It does cure faster, but you’d have to either purchase a UV light or set it outside to cure, risking dust and dirt particles falling into your resin as it cures and causing you to wait to do your project for a sunny day.
Because of the different chemicals used to create epoxy resin and UV resin, you’ll need to use different types of food coloring for each resin. Before you begin mixing food coloring or any other colorant with resin, remember that resin is a toxic substance.
Always take proper safety precautions and wear protective gloves, goggles, breathing mask, and other equipment to stay safe while you mix and pour your resin.
How To Use Food Coloring To Dye Epoxy Resin
If you want to try using food coloring to dye epoxy resin, you’ll need to stick with gel-based food coloring. This is the kind that works best to mix in with epoxy resin.
To achieve bright results, it’s best to mix in 2-3 drops of gel food coloring with your resin. Mix thoroughly to prevent unwanted streaks or color dots where the color is more concentrated in some areas than others.
When using gel food coloring to dye epoxy resin, remember that food coloring isn’t designed for this use, and epoxy resin isn’t designed to be dyed with food coloring.
Your results will vary based on your resin, your food coloring, and the way you mixed everything together. The final color of your epoxy resin if dyed with gel food coloring will not be bright. You will have a pale, translucent color tint added to your resin.
If you want to prevent your resin from remaining translucent, you’ll have to add white colorant to your resin as well to give it a base to dye with.
There aren’t any white food colorings, so this would have to be done with white colorant designed to be used with epoxy resin.
How To Use Food Coloring To Dye UV Resin
If you want to try dying your UV resin with food coloring, you have to use oil-based food coloring. Because of the consistency of UV resin, gel doesn’t work as well and water-based food colorings will just be runny and create streaks.
Water-based food colorings are the most common types that you will find on grocery store shelves, so be sure to read the package details prior to purchasing any pack of food coloring for dying resin.
As opposed to the gel food coloring used for epoxy resin, you’ll want to be lighter with your application of oil-based food coloring in UV resin.
Start with half a drop of oil-based food coloring added to your UV resin and mix thoroughly. Half a drop should be plenty, but for a brighter look, you can try using a full drop.
You shouldn’t need more than one full drop to dye UV resin using oil-based food coloring. That one drop will provide as much color as you’re going to get in your UV resin without going downhill in quality.
If you add too much oil-based food coloring to your UV resin, it will create streaks and color dots that ruin the final product you’re creating.
Just as with the epoxy resin, if you want to make your color look more opaque and less translucent, you’ll need to add some white colorant to give the color a base to work with and create a more solid look.
Colorant Options Made For Resin
Although you can use food coloring to dye resin, you won’t get great results and it’s not the best method available.
We recommend using colorants specifically made to dye resin rather than using home alternatives. One great option is to use mica powder. This will work for both UV resin and epoxy resin.
Mica powder is ideal for mixing with resin because the powder dilutes and merges seamlessly with the liquid resin mixture.
With a set of mica powder, you’ll get vibrant colors that can give your resin new life. It’s also incredibly easy to work with, so we think it’s the ideal option if you want to dye your resin.
Keep in mind that if you use darker colors with UV resin, it will take longer to cure (or won’t cure properly at all) because the UV light can’t penetrate the dark color to get through the entire UV resin mold.
For best results, use only lighter pigments with UV resin. Another option that works for epoxy resin is using epoxy resin pigments. These are colorants specifically designed to be mixed in with epoxy resin, so you know they’ll be able to mix and cure properly.
With any colorant you use, be sure to mix completely before pouring. Many people complain of slower cure times or streaks in the color, but these things only happen if you use too much colorant or don’t mix it properly.
Less is more. Start with a light amount of color and you can work your way up to the darkness you prefer. Follow all package instructions on whatever colorant you choose to get the best results.
Other Alternatives To Dye Resin
If you still want to experiment with other types of colorants besides the ones specifically designed for use with resin, we recommend the following three options: eyeshadow, sidewalk chalk, and acrylic paint.
Eyeshadow is easy to use to dye resin because it’s in powder form, just like mica powder, so it tends to mix well.
Like any other colorant, be sure to start with a small amount of eyeshadow and mixing well before adding more. It’s tempting to add a lot of color if you want to achieve a vibrant look, but adding too much will ruin the consistency of the resin.
Eyeshadow is convenient because there are so many different color palettes out there to choose from, you can dye your resin any color you want.
Sidewalk chalk is another great option, but it comes with a few more drawbacks compared to eyeshadow. The thicker consistency of sidewalk chalk powder means you can get globs of chalk in your resin that don’t mix very well.
Be sure to grind your sidewalk chalk thoroughly before adding the powder to your resin. Mix as long as you need to in order to get smooth color without any darker globs of chalk.
Because sidewalk chalk is lighter in color by nature, you won’t get any vibrancy from using this method. This will only help you create very light, pale tints to your resin. Acrylic paint can also be used to dye resin, but use this method very cautiously.
Though acrylic paint has been used to color resin for quite some time, it’s certainly not the ideal method. The consistency of the acrylic paint can throw off the consistency of the entire resin mix.
Add just a small drop of acrylic paint and mix thoroughly. Since acrylic paint is highly pigmented already, you shouldn’t need more than this to achieve a vibrant color result.
If you are looking to color your resin for cheap, you can use one of our alternatives listed here: food coloring, eyeshadow, sidewalk chalk, or acrylic paint.
However, if you want the best end result for your colored resin project, we highly recommend sticking with mica powder or epoxy resin colorants.
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