Review: Jacquard Marbling Kit

In 2013 I had so much fun marbling. It really became an obsession. I even taught a local three-session class on it to lure the local art girls into marble mania. If you are interested in my past marbling adventures, check out these posts.

Yesterday I decided to return to marbling. Here are some of my pieces from that session.

marblingsetjuly16

This time I am marbling using the Jacquard Marbling Kit.

Jacquard Marbling KitThis kit comes with everything you need to marble except fabric or paper and the marbling pan. It also comes with directions and troubleshooting tips.

As I talked about before in previous marbling posts, this is not a process that you decide to do in the morning. There is some prep.

For the fabric prep, dissolve 4 tablespoons of Alum in one gallon of warm water.

addingalum

Add fabric and let it soak for  20-30 minutes. I decided to marble some previously ice dyed pieces and some plain white fabric.

fabricsoakinginalum After soaking, hang the fabric to dry. Iron and it is all ready to be marbled.

To prepare the thickened water or “size”, add 2 tablespoons of the the carrageenan slowly to a gallon of warm water. The best way to do this is with a blender. Adding a cup or two of water and a little carrageenan. Then dump that into a container and add more water and carrageenan until all of the carrageenan has been added. It needs to be completely dissolved.

makingthesizeNow wait until it clears. They recommend 12 hours. After mine was completely dissolved, I put it in a gallon water jug and stored it in the dye studio refrigerator for the next day’s session. The next morning I took it out of the refrigerator, poured into my marbling pan and let it sit for several hours so that it could come to room temperature. This is an important point – the marbling size and the paint need to be at room temperature. If there are any bubbles on the size, drag a piece of newspaper over the surface toward you.

Now it’s time to play. Here is my studio set up to marble.

marblingsetupThe small plastic container in the front is for me to test the paints on the size.  I took a little bit of the size and put it in the container and then added each color to see how it spread. They all worked great so it was time to get started.

testingthepaint

Next comes the fun part – creating the pattern on the size. If you’d like to see me creating a pattern on the size, check out my video at the end of this post.

addingpainttosize Once you like your pattern, lower the fabric on top of it, lift it off, and set aside on newspaper or newsprint.

marblingwetpiecesOnce done marbling, lightly rinse off each piece and hang them to dry.

rinsingoffsizeAfter 24 hours, iron. In the past when I’ve ironed on the right side, it messed up the pattern. Because of that I recommend ironing on the wrong side of the fabric. Jacquard recommends not washing the fabric for several days and then hand wash cold or on a gentle cycle in the washing machine.

As for the used size, if it’s not too “dirty” with paint, you can save it and use it for another session. However, it doesn’t keep long even in the refrigerator. Mine was pretty dirty so I poured it down the drain with running hot water.

Here are some of my favorite pieces:

marblingjuly1 marblingjuly2 marblingjuly3 marblingjuly4 marblingjuly5This last piece I took the picture vertically because of the design. It looks like a flower to me! The second and last pieces were previously ice dyed with Jacquard Antique Gold.

So here are my thoughts about the Jacquard Marbling Kit:

  • These paints are so much easier to use than the acrylic paints. There is no mixing required. They spread great right out of the bottle.
  • The paint can be added to the size right out of the bottle due to the great little tip on the end.
  • Very little paint dropped to the bottom of the marbling pan.
  • All of the colors were pretty vibrant on the fabric especially the purple and yellow. A couple of pieces looked faded, but that was due to not adding enough paint.
  • Great directions are included in the kit.
  • In my past marbling sessions. my favorite pieces have been those that are marbled over previously dyed fabric. In this session, I liked my pieces that were previously dyed, but I also loved the ones that I added a lot of paint so there was very little white showing. For those pieces that I didn’t like or looked faded due to lack of enough paint, I can definitely over marble them as I have done in the past.

I did not use the synthetic gall that’s included in the kit. It helps to make the paints spread which I didn’t feel I needed. If you want one color to dominate you can add it to a little of the paint.

If you are interested in marbling, I highly recommend this kit. In the past it was fun to experiment with acrylic paints, but I found my results with these marbling paints far superior. And the fact I didn’t have to work with getting the paint the right consistency saved a lot of frustration and paint. I love my results!

Marbling is really a neat process. It’s so magical to add the paint to the size creating beautiful designs.  To give you an idea of how the process looks, here is a little video from this session.

See other Off the Wall Friday inspiration.  That’s all for today. Thanks again for dropping by.

Disclaimer: I received this product from Jacquard. The opinions expressed here are 100% my own. I was under no obligation to offer a positive review and received no monetary compensation.