Paper Marbeling

A few weeks ago i saw a post on FB about paper marbling and i was caught!

I ordered a special paint kit and special paper to try my hand at this lovely Art. In the picture you can see what I ordered... And that the paper is in Japanese! So i going to have to google which side of the paper to lay face down. I tried both sides. The shiny side resulted in a brighter color than the dull rough side. 

Above is a picture of the shiny side marbled and below is the dull marbled

Also, in the paint kit was a small card of circles to punch out and use when adding color to the water. Of course, the first few times i didn't use one. I wondered why the paint was sinking. I thought I remembered it floating so gracefully on top of the water. Well, i decided I better read what I could since following the pictures and my memory wasn't working out so well! And you know.... Those little dots... They did the trick. All i had to do was punch one out and put it in the water. It has to be wet but still float. Gently drop color to the dot and the paint flows beautifully into the water just as I remembered. 

The next thing I learned was when pulling designs in the paint or swirling it around you need to keep your tool ( i was using a tiny stick) at the top of the water as the paint is lying on the waters surface. So what you will be doing is pulling the paint around in the design you want. It seems like the paint they use in the youtube videos is a bit thicker, but it could just be my inexperience.

And the last thing I learned is.... You need to work on this indoor. It was such a beautiful spring day and i wanted to be outside, but that gentle breeze was like a cyclone to my freshly marbled papers causing them to stick together like glue. But thats ok... Now i have a nice little stash of collage papers!

I believe the paper is a rice paper. It was impossible to keep them from tearing in the wind. Once i got them laid out I ised the lid to my container as a cover to keep them from blowing around.

This is the container i picked up for this project. I was able to marble 2 pieces of paper at a time, so you could use a smaller tray.

Well, y'all have fun with this project and let me know how it works for you.

Follow me on Youtube where I will post a video of this project soon.