by matt | Apr 27, 2015 | Articles
We love using yall’s stuff, and are doing some Japanese dragon artwork using the new lime green pearl and bright yellow metallic candy pearl to highlight the brushwork.
Well check this out :)
This car has electric blue candy pearl in the blue side of the car base coat, Bronze copper candy tint pigment in the clear on the wheels (the blue side is over silver base, the gray side is over black base), more Bronze copper candy tint pigment highlighting the fish scales that was mixed with 1 shot clear and brushed straight on, Deep pink pearl in the highlights on the cherry blossoms that was also mixed with 1 shot clear and brushed straight on, there is also some Silver crystal pearl mixed in with the white 1 shot highlights on the blue side of the car.
in all I think we used 2 full bags of Bronze copper candy tint pigment and 1 full bag of the electric blue pearl.
The entire car took about 720 hours to do, the artist is Cindy Raschke (www.cindyraschke.com ) and the technical paint and body was all performed by us here at Sideways AutoSalon.
We at Pearls and Pigment appreciate all of our customers who take the time to send us pictures and feedback on all of our products. Our Candy Color Pearls, Metallic Paint Flake, True Chameleon pigments, Thermochromics, Glow In The Darks and all other paint pigments are truly custom paints and can be used in almost any application. There are so many options with our products! Photos, Videos and testimonials are a great way to show off the capabilities of our additives. If you find the opportunity, send us some great pics and a small testimonial about what you did with our products and we will send you a gift card for the website. We love to show off the work that our wonderful customers are doing. Contact us and send us your work!
-Matt
by matt | Apr 26, 2015 | Articles
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Although many people use our products for a wide variety of things, from painting fishing lures, carnival rides, custom concrete sealers, and even hotel lobbies and home interiors-our main concentration is automotive paint. Our love of cars and quality automotive custom paint jobs has lead us initially to open this business. Our disappointment at the cost of most automotive paint lead us to develop a cheaper and better way of painting. You choose your custom paint. Chameleon paint, iridescent pearls (or ghost pearls, as we call them),temperature change (thermochromic) paint, and our popular metallic candy pearls, all make up our line of discount pigments. We even sell glow-in-the-dark pigments at a deep discount..[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”424″ img_size=”medium”][vc_column_text]Mauve Rose red Candy Color Pearls on Corvette Hood.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”139″ img_size=”medium”][vc_column_text]Orange Copper Candy Pearl Hood
Aside from Custom paint, we also supply pearls that are OEM compatible with the major automotive paint manufacturers’ pearls.
Click Here for compatibility chart.
Since we get our automotive paint pigment right from the manufacturer, we are the only middle man involved and can pass on the discounts to you. We have lower expenses than any other paint company out there, and can therefore pass on the discounts to you. We started out by selling mostly to backyard hobbyists, and can now boast that many of our customers have created true show cars and motorcycles with our custom automotive paints.
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by matt | Apr 26, 2015 | Articles
Thermochromic paints are paints that change color at a given temperature. Although there are color change paints for a wide array of temperatures, we have decided to start our inventory off with those that change at 30 Degrees C, or at 86 Degrees F. They are very effective at changing to a clear as the temperature goes up to reveal the graphics or base color underneath.
Warning: Thermochromics are very sensitive to UV light, and will fade without proper protection.
We have excellent luck spraying our pearl paint, candy paint, chameleon paint, metal Flake, and temperature change pigments in products such as PPG’s DBC-500 color blender, but we understand that many of our customers are using Dupont’s color blender or just any old clear binder. Using these Color Blenders, you can make over a mixed quart of temperature changing paint for less than 1/4 what you will pay anywhere else.
Thermochromic paints have been known to have issues with UV Tolerance if not top-coated with an appropriate UV inhibitor clear coat. Many of these clears are priced above $200 per gallon. If you are going to use the color change pigments for outdoor use, check out alsacorp.com for their “Sunscreen Clear”, or look for a high-end Dupont clear. We now have a clear coat of our own to provide excellent UV tolerance as well. It is called All Kandy Wet Wet Plus with extra UV. protection. Using these high-UV tolerance clears has been shown to last over a year in full UV. Keeping your project garaged when not in use will increase the longevity of the paint as well. A few extra coats of quality UV clear never hurts either.
Tips:
Paint at a temperature under 86 Degrees when using the 86 degree F paint. That way you can see what kind of coverage you are getting. Make sure the surface you are painting is also cool.
Remember, you can use color changing paints over any basecoats, including graphics. You can have a black car that changes to a yellow car with flames during the daylight. You can have graphics that dissapear when the car warms up, if you paint the graphics with the color changing paint.
You can add any pearls, candy paint pigments, or metal Flake right into the mix of color-change pigments, or topcoated over the color-change paintpigments. The good thing about that is the extra protection you get for UV, as our pearls contain Titanium Oxide, a principle ingredient in sunscreen.
Do yourself a favor, don’t let your project sit around too long before you top-coat it with a high quality UV clear coat. Giving yourself a few extra coats of clear never hurts.
As far as quality goes, we are proud to offer you this product, as we have heard many people complain about the cost that other paint manufacurers are charging for this exact same product, pre-mixed into a binder. Smart painters know that all paints are basically binders + pigments. So why pay someone an extra 300 dollars out of your pocket for the same thing?
by matt | Apr 26, 2015 | Articles
Custom Paint made easy | How do we define Custom Paint
Custom paint can be defined in many ways. In the simplest, most easily definable way, it is one-of-a-kind paint that is different than anyone else’s paint. That can be the same for cars, buildings, interiors, or toys and knick-knacks. It is a way of expression that defines regular, normal color as no longer good enough to be pleasing to the eye, unless of course you are looking at a tree or the sky. One extra step adds new dimension and depth to paint, and the more you look at it, the more it reveals to you. We have seen this in so many different forms, not just cars and motorcycles, but in faux-finish, powder coating, pottery glaze, and in basic arts and crafts. It is limited only by the imagination. Literally millions of combinations of colors can be made.
Red Phantom Pearl on Blue Chevy Fender
Rose Red Candy painted over a silver base coat.
Red Phantom Pearl on Blue Chevy and Mauve Red Candy over black base coat.
The products we sell here at Pearls and Pigment will make millions of colors, because any of them can be mixed with each other, or in multiple colors. It is all up to the painter to decide. Like any smart custom paint sprayer, it is always wise to have some small test panels to spray out so that you know what you are trying to achieve. We believe that we sell a true custom paint. Not one that is pumped out in thousands of gallons from a huge manufacturer. That is not how one-of-a-kind colors are made.
Custom paint should also be available for everyone. That means that we should not be forced into spending thousands of dollars on a paint job when the paint companies themselves are buying the same pigment that we are and marking them up by thousands of percentage points. How does we afford to sell the pearl paint, candy paint, metal Flake, and especially chameleon paint at much lower prices? Have you seen the marketing behind those places? They have massive amounts of overhead, and the price get passed on to you, the consumer. Custom paint has been a passion of ours for quite a while, and the fact of the matter is that we are a small business run by Matt and Lyndi Donley, with get this, zero employees. Almost no marketing goes into this company, so we can keep our prices low, because we only need to make enough money to feed our kids and put them through school, like so many of our customers, we are getting by day to day. Our customer service feedback is incredible, and we have thousands of positive feedbacks on Ebay.
Remember, the dry pearl paint pigment, candy paint pigment, and the metal flake we sell can be used in any type of medium, not just paint. We have many clients involved in concrete finishing, plastics, interior decorating, and powder coating industries. We have resellers all over the world (Australia, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, and right here in the United States), and we pride ourselves on our ability to help our resellers in any way that we can to make more money. See our reseller’s page for more details.
We are always available to help those in need, either by email or by phone. We can also process orders over the phone if we need to, so don’t hesitate to contact us! We do not mind giving some advise on custom paint, but please refrain from calling us if you need painting lessons!.We get a lot of calls from people not knowing how to prep a car for painting. There are hundreds of newsgroups and forums out there that can teach you what you need to know about custom painting. Check out our user’s pages for ideas on what you can do to create your custom paint job!
by matt | Apr 16, 2015 | Articles
Metal Flake – Metallic Flake
Classically, metal flake paint is a staple in the custom painting world. The problem has always been the tons of extra work involved when painting with standard sized Flake. In most of the older flake jobs, the amount of extra knockdown and sanding involved with doing the overall paint job makes metal flake the lesser desirable option when using custom paint. We have seen some metal flake paint jobs that were such a disaster because the Flake were too large to go around the edges of doors, hoods, etc. The fact of the matter is that painters can still get big sparkle out of small Flake, so we choose to sell mainly the smallest metal flake, although we can get larger flake sizes for those who insist upon larger Flake. See our user’s pictures for a good idea of what these beautiful Flake can do for your custom paint job. Our Flake are so small, they give perfect coverage to even the smallest edges you can find in any applications. We order Flake in the .004″ size (that’s 4 thousandths of an inch).
Creating a great metal flake paint job is super simple with our Flake. Just choose your base coat (black is good if you want the paint to take on the color of the Flake), and add a heaping tablespoon of our flake to any clear coat (although we recommend a base clear for mixing the flake into, like PPG’s DBC-500, or HOK’s intercoat clear). Knockdown isn’t even an issue with our flake. We have seen full coverage with just 3 coats of clear on these Flake, and your door and hood edges will be as smooth as if you just rolled the car off the showroom floor. Keep in mind, that even though they are called “metal flake”, most of our Flake are made from special solvent-resistant polyesters that can withstand the chemicals in the clear coat. See our tips pages for more information, our download our instructional PDF. Remember, unlike some Flake that people dust onto wet clear-coat dry and spend about 400 bucks for 20 jars of flake to paint a single auto, our system is much more efficient. As we say around here, “One jar paints a car.”
We also sell an variety of chameleon Flake, which are doing great things in the color-changing and chameleon paint world. These Flake, when painted over a black surface, add an incredible overall color-chaging effect to your project.
Speaking of color-changing, we sell a full variety of hologram and prismatic Flake. These little beauties add holographic rainbow effects to any paint job, whether it be candy paint or pearl paint.
Powder coaters have also had great success with our products. Even mixing the Flake at 1/40 ratio with any color of powder coatings can give you an excellent flake effect. All of our Flake (except for the chameleons) have a 400 degree temperature threshold, so they can be used easily in powder coatings as well as paint and gel coat.
In addition to paint and powder coat, boat builders and fiberglass fabrictors have used our products in both the restoration of old fiberglass and the creation of new fiberglass products.
We have had great success with people in the world of interior decor and faux finish as well. Whether creating an underwater look using our peacock flake or just adding some glitz and glam to a storefront, our Flake have been doing great things in the world of faux finish and interior design. For tips on using Flake with faux finish, see our faux tips page.
We have seen our metal flake used in other applications as well, from custom toy builders to custom helicopter paint jobs, so the possibilities are endless! You can mix any of our pearl pigments and candies in with our Flake. Our metal flake has quickly gained popularity and notariety in the paint world, and a look at our user’s pictures can show you what your possibilites are. The fact is, we have discovered that our Metal flake, pearl paint, chameleon paint, and candy paint come from literally the same manufacturers as Flake you will pay 5 times as much for at your local paint shop with a fancy name on them. In today’s economy it’s time to be smart. Creating a custom paint that saves you money will equal more money in your pocket in the end, and gives your project a look like it cost a fortune.
If you are still confused over which products would look good over your existing paint, or want to discuss your options, contact us!
We have been around for 10 years and are on our second web site. Check out our old site if you like. Don’t forget to check out our Youtube Channel.
by matt | Apr 6, 2015 | Articles
Our Colorshift Pearls ® Colorshift paint has been gaining quite a bit of popularity, due to the great pricing and the cool colors that we have available. The Colorshift Pearls ® are a color shifting paint with angle and light, with usually several different colors involved with the shift.
The older Colorshift Pearls ® were made by exact combinations of our Phantom Pearl ® paint and Candy Pearl ® paint . It is always important to paint over a BLACK base coat with our chameleon paint pearls , because black will not interfere with the true colors in the pigments . Painting over dark colors will make the chameleons stand out better. Although we have seen some white and red chameleon paint jobs that are simply awesome. With our products, it’s good to get a few coats down. It’s also always true that using a quality top-coat clear (like one that is over 100 bucks a gallon and has adequate UV protection) will keep the colors shifting and protect your paint job like it should be protected. Good quality clear coat is always a recommendation when custom painting.
With our chameleon paint Flake we also ask that painters use a black base coat for overall color changing effects.. They are truly a color changing flake, with different color effects depending on the light and angle that you see them. Our chameleon paint Flake can be sprayed over a white base, but not to acheive a color-change paint effect, but to acheive more of an abalone shell sparke effect. We highly recommend these Flake and we recommend that people mix them at about 1 heaping tablespoon per quart of base clear, and use a quality clear top coat to spray over the flake, as our other chameleons. Our chameleon Flake are unfortunately the only product we sell that cannot be used in powder coating, because the heat threshold will not tolerate the powder coating ovens. In paint, however, these chameleon Flake can be mixed with our candy paint, pearl paint, or our other metal Flake.
Black base coat: You may mix any of the chameleon paint pigments into any of our ghost pearls or candy paint pearls, but keep in mind that using too much will make the project take on the color of the pearl and overwhelm the chameleon. The effects that you can acheive are endless.
Remember, creating a one-of-a-kind custom paint job isn’t buying it from a can. There are literally millions of make them yourself colors available at your fingertips with very little experimentation. At our prices, anyone could buy a few of our products and create never before seen colors.
If you are still confused over which products would look good over your existing paint, or want to discuss your options, contact us! We always try to make ourselves available to painters and powder coaters for extra advise. As with any paint project, paint test panels before you begin, so that you achieve the custom paint effect that you want!
Don’t forget to check out our Youtube Channel.
