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1. A.Arabica is the coffee tree that makes arabica coffee. I am not sure what this does. It is a good question let me see what I can find out. They aren't the same thing.
2. It's tough here, you don't want to add anything else. You may want to try to find another paper that performs better. A really raw paper without sizing is more likely to bleed. If you use a heavily sized paper like internall and externally sized, you can probably get away with thinner ink without bleeding. The other thing you can do is thicken gum arabic thicker than you want and add salt. Salt will break up the interactions and thin the gum arabic, but will leave the solids in there. So, when you get it to that thinner consistency, it still has enough solids so it doesn't bleed and stays where you want it.
3. You want a dispersant to keep the powders up in the mix instead of falling. Another word for dispersant is soap. You will find different soaps have different properties. Experiment with a hand soap a dish soap and see which works best for you. Dish soap is usually pretty powerful so you only need like a drop. Some of teh pearl ex powders have a fine oil on them to prevent them from getting kicked up in the air because they are so fine, these are slightly harder to mix into water and a drop of dish soap works great here.
4. The sparkle is directly linked to particle size. The larger the particle size the more glittery, the smaller the more even pearl look you get. Micropearl is our smallest particle and it lookes smooth and pearl. Macropearl is our largest and looks the most like glitter. Grinding them will change the effect. You are betetr off dispersing them better like in #3. Some larger particle sizes are going to clog, It is their nature unfortunately.
5. The colored pearls often have additional pigments included. The black mica by itself is a bit dark grey. They do add Iron oxide. I guess you have figured out which other colors contain the black mica.
6. You can use the pearl ex varnish after, but I think you wouldn't like to mix it in. It has an acrylic binder in it, which means like acrylic paint, you would worry it would fry in your pen and ruin it. The reason you use gum arabic is it is always rewettable. I think you would do better experimenting with salt and finding a consistency you like that way.
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