• Marbling Tutorial

Edited October 27th 2017 - Originally posted May 18th 2016

In this tutorial I'll go through the basics of creating an effect that looks like marble in your casts! The casts I'll show in this guide will use 3 colors - white blue and red. It's important to choose colors that mix well together, as they may blend while mixing them; in this case pink/ purple/ light blue are going to be the "extra colors".

These are all the materials I'll use for these caps (except the resin of course).

I use two different types of colorants for this guide, I'll go more into detail further down.

I start of by mixing a base color - white. This colorant is a polyurethane based paste, which increases the viscosity of the resin, allowing for smoother marbeling in later stages. This can otherwise be achieved either by adding some sort of filler or metal powder.

Now I just drop in a small drop of each color of highly concentrated colorant into the white resin. Now it's time to mix!

Here's after the first mix. A few strokes with a toothpick is enough; just make sure you get some nice swirls. Before continuing after this phase, just let the resin sit like this for a short time to allow the colors to sink into the resin.

This pic is taken ~1 minute after the last one; waiting a little and mixing again ensures that the second colorant gets deeper into the resin. As you can see, quite a bit of the white has started to show compared to the last picture!

Now you just have to pour it straight in the molds! I applied mine to the stems with a toothpic as to prevent bubbles being trapped in them. This can be avoided by having sprues in your stems as well.

Now just close the molds and wait! 

Here's the finished products! Turned out awesome in my opinion. The fun thing with marble effects is that it varies a lot between each cap, no cast is exactly like another!

I hope you learned something this guide; for any questions regarding the process or suggestions for future tutorials, feel free to contact me!