Metallic Paint - Make Your Own

All that glitters is not gold, but in paint, if it glitters… it is probably mica. This is the first ingredient in a lot of sparkling eye shadow… That’s right - EYESHADOW!

Here is a cool tip I discovered along the way to matching color paint for my Blue Angles scheme. The most beautiful paint jobs have a metallic sparkle… so why not do this for our models? Cost? Availability? I wanted the ability to make a custom metallic color, so I did a little searching around.

I have to give credit for this to Lindsay Weirich: thefrugalcrafter Lindsay Weirich

When searching for how to make my own metallic paint, her youtube caught my attention. Here is how I applied it to Ross foam core (note that Readi-Board from Dollar Tree will delaminate if painted with water based paints). When looking for materials, find the ones that have mica as the first ingredient. LA Colors has a  range of eye shadow colors, and the best thing about them is is they can be purchased at the dollar store. A trip to Dollar Tree for eye shadow. Here are the available colors:

The Dollar Tree near me only had these: Snow White, Lollipop, Grape Jelly, Honeysuckle, Radiant, and Sunshine. So let's go with them.

Getting the stuff out of the bottles.

The bottles are not very convenient for dumping the contents so you have to break open the bottle. First, work outside or somewhere a mess won't matter. This stuff is dusty, sparkly and goes everywhere. If you watched Lindsay’s video, she was having a hard time of it…

The bottles are one unit except for the press fit bottom. This can be pried off:

Safety Message: Do not hold the bottle like this… one slip and you’ll run the screwdriver right through your hand. There are a few safe ways to get the bottom off. Hear is what I found works consistently.

Put the bottle into a vice and squeeze the rim of the bottom until you hear it crack. Don’t crush the bottle or you’ll have sparkling dust all over the place. A small crack will loosen the bottom.

Hold the bottle against the table and wiggle a tiny screwdriver between the edge and the bottom.

Pry it off. Now that you have the bottom off, dump the contents into another container. Dollar Tree has a bunch of little screw cap plastic containers for beads that work nicely and I suppose a small ziplock bag would work. I had a bunch of little bottles that I used.

Make a funnel out of paper and dump. Tap the container vigorously to get all the contents out (I used a handy pair of scissors.

Mixing the Paint.

For the medium, I’m sure just about anything will work… like Minwax water based polycrylic, Mod Podge or Elmer’s glue, but I used some varnish for the medium: Americana DuraClear Gloss Varnish. I got it at AC Moore with a 50% off coupon. Here is another tip. The DuraClear looks the same as polycrylic, and cost ⅓ as much. I just picked up 8 oz. for $3.25 where the 8 oz. polycrylic at Walmart cost $9 at Walmart.

To mix, just sprinkle a bit into a mixing container or pallet, add enough medium to mix it and the paint is ready.

The colors look pretty cool. From the left we have snow white. White on white is not noticeable, but we have another use for it, so we'll come back to that in a minute. The Radiant has a nice copper color sheen. Lollipop is pinkish, Grape Jelly is a really deep purple, Sunshine is gold and the Honey Suckle is tanish copper.

Custom Metallic Colors.

Well, if you ask me, none of these are the colors I was looking for. The original goal was to find an additive to put into my acrylic paints to make them metallic. The snow white doesn’t show up unless it is on a dark back ground.

Here is Snow White and Sunshine against a custom made metallic Cobalt Blue background.

Here is how I made the Metallic Cobalt Blue…

When I was on a hunt for a color to match the Blue Angels color, I tried a bunch of different blue colors. It didn’t seem that I could get close, so I started mixing different colors of blues. Still it wasn’t quite close enough. Then, another discovery (for me - but probably everybody in the world knows this). I have a spray can of Krylon clear gloss finish. I know that the propellent will melt foam, so I haven’t ever used it on the foam. Just for kicks I took one of the test cases above (Top right) and sprayed it. The color popped into the right shade.

Here is my first swatch with Cobalt Blue and Gloss Varnish overlaid (top half of panel). The color deepened, just what I wanted.

I thought - why don’t I just add mica to the blue to get the metallic. Then I discovered that AC Moore sells Americana pearlizing medium. The directions say to mix it 1:1 with the paint, but this lightened the color of the paint.

So I started mixing different amounts of the pearlizing medium to see if I could capture the metallic without changing the color. All of these panels were painted with cobalt blue, the top two had different amounts of pearlizing medium added. Middle panel left ¼, middle panel right ⅛, top panel left 1/16 and top panel right 1/32. I think the 1/16 was the best overall.

So I tried something else. Why not add the Snow White eye shadow to the Cobalt Blue? This photo shows the eyeshadow on top, the middle strip is cobalt blue alone and the bottom third is the cobalt blue with 1/16 pearlizing medium. All three were over painted with the DuraClear varnish. I can’t really tell the difference between the pearlizing medium and the Snow White eyeshadow. Guess I can make it either way.  

So I think I have my Blue Angels metallic blue color.

HilldaFlyer - Feb 2016