Marbling

Any idea what these crazy art supplies are for??

Marbling, of course! Which is where the very creative title of this post comes in. ;)

Over Thanksgiving weekend my oldest brother and his wife, Jill, visited. It is always so ridiculously fun having them over. Jill and I decided we had to do a fun art project while they were here, hence this post!

You need a few special supplies, so this isn't a tutorial. But I thought you'd enjoy seeing the process, as it's so interesting!

The day before the project, we mixed up the size, which is a mixture of water and carrageenan (a type of seaweed that acts as a thickener.) We also painted paper with a mixture of water and alum, to make the paint stick.

The next day we poured the size into an old cookie sheet thing, and we were ready to go!
First Jill splattered a special kind of paint onto the size. It floats!

Then she took one of our hand-made combs and pulled it through the paint to make the beginning of a pattern.

Then she pulled it the other direction to finish the pattern.

And then she laid the alum coated paper onto the size.

And the paint stuck!
Right after you pull the paper off, you actually rinse it under water. You'd think the paint would run off, but it sticks perfectly, and the water just rinses off the goopy size. Weird, eh?
(Spell check tells me "goopy" isn't a word. I say it is! So there, spell check. Thbzzzz!)

After each printing, we would take an old ruler and glide it over the size to pull off any extra paint, and then we could move on to the next pattern!

This is me using a comb with teeth that are closer together for a more delicate pattern.

Here are some of my favorite finished pieces:

We also did another style of marbling, called Stone Marbling, cuz it looks more like real marble!

I really like this last one, because it's kind of a mixture of both styles of marbling. First the more swirly kind, with stone marbling on top!

I just love crazy art projects. In case you haven't noticed. :)

Have you done any cool projects lately? I'd love to hear!

P.S. Jill did a post on marbling over at her blog! You should check it out. She made a really cute art piece out of one of her marbled papers!

P.P.S If you really want to try marbling yourself, this is where we bought the special paint.

Our paint has lasted for years, and we've done marbling many, many times.

You can also see beautiful and professional samples of marbling at that site. :)