Tuesday, June 21, 2011

"Marbled" Paper

I interrupt this regularly scheduled blog for a Mommy Blogger Craft Post. 


I'll give you some time to hurl.  


(...waiting....)


(You drank some water on sucked on an Altoid, right?) 


OK.  


So.  


Summer doldrums kick in pretty early and I thought making marbled paper would be a happy, happy, fun, fun, minimal cost project.  Before we go any further and in the spirit of keeping with this year's theme, "minimal cost" translated to $9.50. 


I saw a Youtube tutorial on it, but I'm going to give you the step-by-step complete-with-pictures post, thereby channeling my inner-Mormon-Bloggy-Mom.  But I'm warning you.  I digress from their style in that some of my pictures are fuzzy, and I'm just not one to care enough to re-stage the photographs. My pic of the day isn't fuzzy, which is good enough for me.  


Say you: You have an inner-Mormon-bloggy-Mom?
Say me: Apparently.  


Ready?  Here goes.  


Materials you need: 

  • card stock or regular paper 
  • food coloring
  • shaving cream  (Yes.  I'm serious) 
  • A scraper of some kind
  • a fork (Trust me.  This all comes together)
  • plates
  • big towel to cover your work surface  

Prep time:  Five minutes
Time distracting the wee ones: 1/3 the time it's going to take me to blog about the whole thing. In other words, not nearly long enough. 


Step one.  Get out your shaving cream: 






Step two: Spray out an alarming amount of shaving cream onto your allotted plate.  Don't freak about using a plate.  This is soap for crying out loud.  It will wash off.   (Please ignore paper plate in the pictures)




Before we go any further, can we just talk about how fun shaving cream is?  No joke. That stuff is as squeezable and irresistible as a fat baby.  I mean really, you can just stop right here and play with the whipped shaving cream, it's so mesmerizing....


Onward.  


Next, take your food coloring (gratuitous picture alert)


Pic of the day
and put dots of color randomly on your mound of cream: 


Oh, let's add one more color, just for shits and giggles. 


Say you: I don't think Mormon Mommy bloggers use the word "shit" in their posts. 
Say me: I bet this ex-Mormon Mom uses worse.  


Anyway, one more color.  Just for shits and giggles: 




Now for the fork.  Take your fork and swirl those colors around, but not to the point that they're mixed completely together.  You know, "marble" it.  


(Do you like how I kept the fork in the picture?  More artsy, no?)


Next, take a piece of paper and squish it down on your mound of cream and swirly colors.  This, my friends, is why the first thing you did was place a towel under your work surface....


Say you: You said step one was getting out the shaving cream! 
Say me: Did I?  Oh.  I guess I did.  Well, step one SHOULD be covering your work surface with a towel.   


Anyway.  Squish. 




Pull it off 




And scrape away the shaving cream: 


Ta da!  (please excuse the REALLY blurry picture.  My hands were covered with all kinds of shit)


Say you: There's that word again
Say me: Bite me.  
Say you: I don't think a Mormon Mommy would use such a retort.  
Say me: Bite me again. 


As I was saying....


Ta da!   




If you're so inclined, now is the time to clap with glee and hurryandmakeanotheronebecauseWOWsosocool!  


 The excess on the scraper can be reused to cover the remaining paper, not the mention the leftover shaving cream sitting on your plate.  You can also add contrasting color to this used mixture for a more vibrant look. 


At this point, you're free to use your paper for all kinds of silly crafts home projects


Here was the end result of our endeavors: 




I would also like to point out that we tried this method, which was referred by a Mormon Mommy.

Disaster.  


I know she insists you get "beautiful results".  Which I suppose is one to describe oil spots on paper: 




 Trust me when I tell you that this was pretty much the way it went for all my efforts.  So I sorta improvised, wadded up the paper and dipped it right into the coloring:  




Which simply resulted in more coverage on oily, now-scrunched up paper.  And stains on my picnic chair:


And my picnic table: 






Did I mention I forget to wear gloves?  ->

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