Marbling on Pearl Cardstock

Welcome Back

Just wanted to share a quick picture of my latest marbled paper project. It was one of those times where I liked the pattern too much to want to stamp or further embellish the cardstock, so I trimmed the top and punched a hole to create a bookmark. Great for gifts. I can see me making more of these bookmarks for birthday or Christmas gifts. Ideal if you want to post a small gift to someone without too much bulk in the envelope.

Bookmark. Marbling onto Pearl Card stock

This was created using the Marbling 4 Fun marbling kit and pearl cardstock about 250 gsm. I was worried that the pearlised coating would prevent the paint drying but this wasn’t a problem and I like the results, what do you think.

Links

• Check out the Art supplies tab for details on where to purchase this kit.
• My review of this kit can be found on the Art Review Tab.

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie 🙂

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Tutorial: My first marbled page: step by step

Welcome Back

After sharing a picture of my first marbled print. I wondered if you would like to see how the print was created? For this tutorial I used the Marbling 4 Fun kit that I reviewed in an earlier post.

My first marbled pages

Here is the Marbling 4 Fun video tutorial, for mixing up the floater powder. You need to do this 24 hours before you want to marble, for the mix to set. This is the fluid that the paints float upon.

Because I only had a small bowl to mix in and a small bottle to store it in, I used the guide found on the Marbling 4 Fun website that states : 5 grams of floater powder to 1 litre of water. I made up 1 litre of water to the 5 grams of floater powder and it was enough to fill the small tray that the kit comes with. So you don’t need so much storage space if you are only doing small items.

To store my floater mixture; I used a clean and empty 2 litre plastic milk bottle, which has a screw top lid. Write on the bottle what it will contain BEFORE you fill it, to ensure there are no accidents with people trying to drink it! You need to leave the mixture at room temperature overnight before you use it. After this stage, if stored in the screw top bottle in the fridge, it can last up to three months.

Set up you area to marble in.

This is a messy process, I won’t lie, but its also very much worth it. The floater mixture, leaves a coating of what feels like thinned out hair gel, on the surface of the paper/project and it takes a fair while to dry. So you need to plan for where you will put them. Here’s how I set up the area I marbled in.

Preparing your workspace to marble in.

First I put a layer of plastic over the whole area, these are just bin bags cut along the sides so they lie flat. On the right, you can see a few layers of blank newsprint, this is not expensive and I got mine from a house moving company. This paper is to lie wet pages onto, while they dry. In the end I also added a try under the white box so I had somewhere to put wet tools.

You need to mix the paint in the kit with soft water 1:1. As suggested by the company, I used old camera film pots for the mixed paint and secured them to the sides of the lid of the box, with masking tape. Its worth sticking them down as by the time you put the pipettes in, they fall over without support! (Ask me how I know!)

Its a good idea to work on a hard floor in case of drips n spills and expect to leave the wet papers overnight if you are working in cold conditions. This was done in February in the UK and they took around 12-24 hours to dry depending on the size of the card/paper, in the unheated studio. Have a bucket to hand to dump the wet waste paper into.

Making marbled patterns

Stage 1: Applying the paint to the tray.

Here are the paints on the water, before I pulled the print.

My first marbling page. Paints on the water.

To create this pattern I used;

• One drip of Violet paint in each corner of the box
• One drip of black paint into the centre of the purple shapes
• White paint acts like a resist, I put white paint in the centre of the black circles
• Another drip of purple into the centre of each of the shapes.

Using the star flower technique, I used a pin to drag ‘petals’ in to the centre of each shape; the flowers with the points, I created by pulling the paint back out toward the edges from each of the purple ‘petals’. I’ll add the star flower video tutorial at the end of the article.

Stage 2: Creating the print

Using 80 gsm printer paper, I placed a sheet on top of the pattern in the try, allowed it to sit there a few moments, then carefully peeled it back off to reveal the print. The first generation of print will be bright, the later ones more pastel.

Here are the newly printed pages, still wet with the floater mix.

First generation marbled paint print on the left and the second generation on the right.

Stage 3: The Finished prints

Here’s how the pages turned out after drying.

My first marbled pages

My second marbled page. Second generation of paint.

Links

Here is Craig Joubert’s video for how the flower pattern is created. I’ll try to make my own videos with marbling, once the light levels improve in the UK. Craig is the maker of the kit and the man behind Marbling 4 Fun.

• More information on mixing the floater powder This is a written
• To purchase this kit, please visit Marbling 4 Fun website

Have you ever tried marbling? How did you get on? Would you like to see more marbling videos at a later date? Let me know in the comments below.

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie 🙂

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My First marbled pages

Welcome Back

Today I’d like to share a couple of pictures of my first marbled pages. These were created using the Marbling 4 Fun kit which I reviewed last week.

My first marbled pages

I was really pleased with how these prints turned out, the colours were very bright and vibrant on the first print and got more pastel as further prints were taken from the original paint layer. This is great as it makes for a lot of versatility in design. You can also alter your later print with more manipulation of the existing paint or add more in some areas for a light and dark effect on the same design.

They tell you to use the pipettes to mix the paint on each application, I wonder if the textured effect (which I quite like) was due to my ‘over mixing’ the paint in this way.

My second marbled page. Second generation of paint.

This was ordinary 80 gsm copier paper and I also marbled onto paper torn from an old book. This was a great way to use the second generation of ink, do it a few times on several sheets to remove all but the last trace of paint from the tray. They get very pale with later generations but if you plan to use them to stamp over, that’s no problem.

What do you think? Have you ever tried marbling? Would love to see your results if you have this kit too.

Links

• Check out the Art Supplies tab for where to purchase this kit. Marbling on Paper section
• My review of Marbling 4 Fun kit

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie 🙂

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