Art School at Home or Church :: Marbled Paper: Shaving Cream & Liquid Watercolors

So, as I explained last week, I’m on a new mission to teach art (not crafts) to my children. I’m not an art teacher or formally trained artist, but I do love to do my own art, and this maternity leave has been a rich time to peruse Pinterest while up at 4 in the morning with little miss Marina Lynn, the cutest baby in Texas. Proof:

What? She’s holding a copy of Faithful Families? I didn’t even notice.

I’ll get right to it. This week we did three different works. Full disclosure: one of them was a bust. This is one of the reasons I’m excited about blogging our adventures — so I can save other parents from embarking on other art adventures only to have it not work out at. all.

This one, though, the marbled paper, was great. I was so focused on taking photos of the process (and the actual prints have already been mailed to the grandparents) that you have to look closely to see the end result, but if you look to the side of this photo, you’ll see it. Trust me, it’s cool. Here’s an example of the finished product to the side of the tray there, and an almost finished, just still wet, one in the tray itself:

So here goes:

Materials:

Shaving cream (Dollar Store for the win!)

Two trays (whatever you have — we used aluminum baking pans)

Liquid Watercolor Paint (aka the most amazing art supply ever in the whole wide world. Srsly) Note: I am the queen of “we don’t need expensive things to have fun or be creative” so I hear you if you’re thinking “Nope. Those are 10 dollars!” I assure you, they last a very long time are vibrant and colorful and there are a ton of projects they can be used for. Got some coming up! Also, they’re washable.

Watercolor Paper (not linking to the paper we used because it wasn’t thick enough. Get some nice thick watercolor paper.)

Something to scrape off the shaving cream from the paper — a piece of cardboard or plastic. We used a wing from a plastic airplane that broke off and was sitting in a drawer. Ha!

How to:

  1. Squirt a whole bunch of shaving cream in a tray (you probably don’t need to use as much as we did but, c’mon! This is the best part!)
  1. Dribble on some water colors — we were making the ocean, so we used only blue and green, but this would be great with any colors or lots and lots of colors.

2. Run a pencil/back of a paintbrush through the shaving cream to make a marbled design

3. Press the paper to the top of the design

4. Scrape off excess

Voila!

So many things to do with this… use the marbled paper as a jumping off point for something else… cut it in to shapes…. let it be what it is, etc. I’ll show you what we did with ours in a future post. Stay tuned!

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