Tutorial: Marbled Paper

Yesterday Brook came over and we had an absolute blast making marbled paper!!  Today, I'm going share how we made our super neat paper!!

SUPPLIES

Cheap Shaving Cream

"Posh Rainbow Ink" (Food Coloring works too)

Old Cookie Sheet

White Paper or Cardstock

Stick, Pen, Paintbrush or Other Utensil

Lots of Paper Towels!!

Step 1: SHAVING CREAM LAYER 

Squirt a bunch of shaving cream onto your cookie sheet that is about the size of your paper and about as thick as your thumb.

Spread the shaving cream (just like cake icing) to make an even layer.

Step 2: ADD INK OR FOOD COLORING

We used some Posh Rainbow Inks that I bought on clearance at Michael's months ago.  However, I've heard that food coloring works just as well!!

Squirt small droplets of ink (or food coloring) onto your shaving cream layer.

This takes some practice, but we found that just shaking the bottle and not squeezing it worked the best.

Add your various colors so you have a significant amount of ink on the shaving cream.

Step 3: SWIRL THE COLORS

Drag your utensil (we used the wrong end of a pen) through the ink and down into the shaving cream and swirl the colors.  There are soooo many different patterns you can make!!

Step 4: MARBLE THE PAPER

Lay your paper or cardstock face down and gently press it into the cream mixture.

Be sure the paper is completely pressed into the shaving cream because you don't want any blank spaces!!

Peel your paper (or cardstock) off of the mixture and set aside for about 10 minutes.

Press as many sheets of paper into the mixture until you don't have any cream left!!

Step 5: REVEAL THE MARBLED PAPER

Be sure to wait 10 minutes before moving onto this step!!  If you don't then you'll get smeared ink on your page and it'll be really messy!!

After the page has dried for about 10 minutes, take a paper towel and gently remove the excess cream mixture from the page.  

Brook found that wiping the page in one direction using even pressure worked best to remove the cream.

FINISHED!!

These are the first two pages made with this batch of inked cream...

Here's a close up of one of the pages...

These are the next 2 pages we made...

Isn't that awesome!! I can't emphasize how much fun we had making these marbled papers!!  I can't wait to find a cool project to use our pages on!!

Thanks for reading!!  Until next time...

Crafty Weekend - Sept. 2011

My best friend, Brook, is a huge inspiration for my creativity.  I go to her regularly with craft-related questions, such as “What kind of project can I use this for?!”  And she always has an answer!

We try to spend 4-6 craft-filled days together each month and we call them our “Crafty Weekends”.  We’re always sure to take lots of pictures of what we make and of course I will be sharing them with you!

Since we’re hoping to get-together this upcoming weekend, I thought I’d post some photos of our projects from September’s “Crafty Weekend”.

Felt Hedgehog Appliqués

  

Brook's                                        Lisa's

These little guys are simply adorable!!  Brook had found the tutorial online and we just made our own patterns.  You can see that we each did ours a little differently.

Shrinky-Dink Buttons

  

                           Brook's                                    Lisa's
Yes, these are buttons made from children's Shrinky-Dink plastic!!  This project was a blast!!  I’ll definitely be posting a tutorial on how to make them in the future!

That big one in Brook’s photo is actually a pendant made from a plastic take-out container that was heated in the oven. How cool!!

Mini-Mushroom Pincushions

Brook's                                        Lisa's

These pincushions are only about 2” tall and have a loop on them so you could attach it to a necklace if need-be.  I’m hoping to have Brook guest post this tutorial sometime soon!

Hand-bound Books

  

                           Brook's                                    Lisa's

I’d never bound my book before and I’m ever so grateful to Brook for teaching me how to do it!!  I’ll be making MANY more books in the future!!

Altered Birdhouses

  

Brook's                                  Lisa's

This was by far my favorite project of the weekend!!  There are so many different ways you could “alter” these little $1 wooden birdhouses and I can’t wait to make more of them!  You can really see the variety of designs you can come up with just by looking at the two ways we decorated ours!

Hopefully Brook and I will be able to get together this weekend and then there will me more fun photos to show you next week!!

Thanks for reading!!  Until next time…