How to Add Mica Powder to Sealant by Becky Nunn

SKU VID-0545
Designer: Becky Nunn
In this video tutorial for Beadaholique, guest designer Becky Nunn of Nunn Design shows how to add mica powder to sealant and then apply it to a piece of jewelry. This technique opens up a wide range of possibilities of coloring metal jewelry components, altering their appearance and giving them added color and depth.
Audio Transcript
Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
This is Becky Nunn, guest designer for Beadaholique.com and in this episode I'm going to be showing you how you can colorize brass embellishments with Nunn Design sealants and mica powders to create looks like you see here. What you'll need are some brass embellishments. These ones are raw unplated by Nunn Design. You'll need some crystal clay, mica powders, some Nunn Design sealant paintbrush and some water to rinse it in and I have a double lot sandpaper For the first step you're gonna wan to put on some gloves because I don't really like handling this stuff with my raw fingers and you're gonna want to scrub down your brass embellishments. See how it leaves all this stuff and this is just cleaning up your surface in case there's any oils on the piece and that would prevent the sealant and the mica power mix it would prevent it from attaching so go ahead and clean that up using that step then we're gonna want to take like a wet wipe and just clean off that surface just making sure that it's nice and clean and now I'm ready to go ahead and put my sealant with mica powder on it to mix your sealant with the mica powder you wanna have wax paper or I just have a little plastic bag and take a little bit of the sealant and scoop it onto plastic there then you're going to take a little bit of the mica powder and I just have a bunch of these smaller size stir sticks that I pick up when I'm getting a coffee. I either save them or grab some shhh don't tell them and I'm gonna mix an amount of mica powder right into that. Just stir those two and blend that together now I have a nice copper mixture of sealant and mica powder. I'm getting all that excess sealant off my brush and blending that in now I'm ready to go ahead and paint it on to my embellishment. I might of had a little bit of water also on my brush prior to mixing that sealant and so that's why it could be beading up like that so if you do just go ahead and rinse it fully I'm wiping it off on a wet wipe just make sure that I don't have any excess water on there. I'm going back in picking up some and putting it on there. You can put multiple coats on if you want to or you can just do a light layer. It dries very fast I don't know what's fast for but depending on how high your environment is it could dry within five minutes go ahead and put a coat on there, wait 5 minutes and then put another coat if that's what I want. Go ahead and rinse your brush just in some water to clean it wait your five minutes to put the next coat on I went ahead and did a second coat on there giving it a nice solid base, totally covering the brass. I put my gloves back on and my what is this? Brillo pad? SOS pad? this thing I'm going ahead and yes distressing it slightly letting some of the brass to show through like so I went ahead and used my Nunn Design sealant and this time I took some pearl white Crystal Clay sparkle dust mix that together and now I'll go over, paint that onto the piece to give it yet another dimension. Pretty fun, huh? go ahead and rinse your brush and depending on whatever color combinations that you use you can create all kinds of fun looks and what I love about this look so much is that each piece can come out unique and right now that's what's really popular is handmade, making it look handmade and making it look really unique To finish my piece off I think I'll probably will attach it right on top of this bezel. This happens to be one of our new grande broaches and I would probably use like crystal clay underneath here and just put it right on there so it looks like my bird is soaring in the clouds. It's that fun? This is Becky Nunn from Nunn Design, guest designer here at Beadaholique.com showing you how you can use sealant and mica powders to create a neat look that you can put on brass. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!

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