Paper Marbling

A new (old) way to play with paper and paint. There is a corner in my room dedicated to art supplies and craft tools that I purchase from every new city I visit. My kind of souvenirs. :) And an excuse to check out all the local stationery shops. While we were in Florence a few years ago, I was hunting for calligraphy supplies, and I couldn't help but notice all the marbled papers that filled up stores. The marbling was done so beautifully, it almost looked like the colors were printed. Since then, paper marbling has been on my craft experiments list. And on this slow long weekend, I finally was able to try it!

The largest tray I could find at home was about 8x12 inches. I filled it up with about 3 inches of warm water. The crucial part of the process is in the thickening of the water so that the color stays on the top surface. I mixed about 1L of water with 1 tsp of Carrageenan powder (seaweed). After adding the seaweed powder to the water, I whisked it in for a couple of minutes until it dissolves. You'll actually feel the water thickening up to something like the texture of egg whites.

I was able to use just one tub of water for multiple prints, because after every "print", the water would clear up enough to make a new design. There would be some tints from the previous design, but I decided to just leave them since I'd be mixing it all up in the end anyway.

https://lifeafterbreakfast.ph/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/LifeAfterBreakfast-PaperMarbling-12.mp4

Dropping in the paint & swirling the colors around is so addicting!

With my niece Millie. Craft jamming in our jammies! I had to draw a dress over her cos we didn't want her actual dress to get dirty :P

Our first batch of outputs. All resources I checked warned me about using watercolor paper. I guess it's because of the sizing of the paper. But here I used Haath handmade cotton watercolor paper. Because it's uncoated, the paint sticks well on it. I didn't even have to treat the paper with any mordant.