Marbling on Paper

I’m back with more marbling, but this time on paper.

Marbled paper
Marbled paper

Unlike fabric which you prep by soaking in alum, for paper the alum water is painted on the paper. Mix up 1 teaspoon of alum in a cup of water and stir for several minutes until the alum is dissolved. Brush it on the paper and let the paper dry. After dry, stack the paper and place something heavy on the stack to flatten the pieces. Now we’re ready to marble.

I am again using the same Liquitex Soft Body paints I used in this marbling post. To make the size or thickened water bath, check out this post.

After playing with the circles as in the paper above, I wanted to play a little with the paints and attempted to make flowers. Here is the pattern before paper is placed on top of the thickened water.

Marbling water
Marbling water with flower pattern

And here are some of the marbled papers from that experiment.

Marbled flower paper
Marbled flower paper

Then I had just a little paint left over on the water and swirled it around a bit before laying down the paper. This is my attempt at traditional marbling.

Traditional marbled paper
Traditional marbled paper

The process with paper is a bit different from fabric. As you pull the paper out of the water bath, run water over it. Do not rub. I set up a container in the sink with water next to my marbling. As I took each piece out of the size, I put it in the container and ran a little water over it. I then took that piece and placed it on my work table that is covered with plastic to dry. If you have the space you could also hang this paper up to dry. Once dry, they can be used in projects.

That sure was fun! Thanks for dropping by.