Marbleizing Paper

This is a wonderful project for ages 2 up to adult, a project you will enjoy doing alongside your children or just do by yourself while sipping a cup of tea ( or stronger if you like). It's a process oriented, sensory based project with a beautiful result. These marbleized paper can hang by themselves or can then be used for Valentines, or wrapping paper or as a background for printmaking or stamping or black ink. 

What you will need-

- A tray or oil cloth to cover your table

- shaving cream

- either food coloring or liquid watercolor of color of your choice

- ruler for scraping off shaving cream

- pipettes

- a chopstick or something else to stir with

- white paper

Spread the shaving cream onto the tray or on the table. With our littlest students, age 5 and under we let the kids just explore the shaving cream first, feeling it and squishing it and scooping it. When they are finished, we then help them to spread the shaving cream evenly on the tray, like spreading frosting. 

I give the children one color at a time in a cup with a pipette, which a fantastic tool for dripping color. If using food coloring, then you won't need the pipette. Just squeeze some drops from the little bottle.  Since we will be using this paper for making valentines later, I gave them red first. They swirl it around using the chop stick. The key is to not mix too much. Have the kids ( or you) move the chop stick back and forth through the color the spread it just a bit.

Then lay the paper gently on top of the shaving cream and press the paper in just a bit. Lift the paper off and it will be covered with shaving cream. You then gently scrape the shaving cream off using the ruler. Then scrape the ruler off onto the tray and flatten the shaving cram again. I usually do the scraping for the kids under the age of 5, just so the paper doesn't get ripped. 

They can then add more red and swirl. This way there is dark reds and light pinks. Just experiment to see what effects you both like. I Also introduce new colors. Again for the Valentines theme, I offered purple and gold, but you could offer any color you like.