Marbled Paper

I found a post earlier last week on how to marble paper. It seemed very complicated based on the post, so I decided to simplify and make it toddler friendly. The original post is over at Design Sponge. My simplified instructions are below:

Materials and tools:

• Acrylic Paint
• Paper - cardstock and printer paper
• 2 cups liquid starch
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• large glass baking dish that will fit paper
• Chopstick or bamboo skewers
• Newspaper or vinyl tablecloth for work area

Process:

• Step 1: Mix cream of tartar and liquid starch into the glass baking dish. I mixed both in a large measuring cup first so I could get the cream of tartar well incorporated, then poured into the baking dish.
• Step 2: Add drops of acrylic paint to the baking dish. Some may fall to the bottom. The folks over at Design Sponge gave great tips on how to avoid this, but we were having too much fun to worry about that.

• Step 3: Drag chopstick or skewer through the paint making swirls and designs. This is what will transfer to your paper.

• Step 4: Place paper into baking dish for a few seconds, making sure you get the entire piece of paper to touch the starch.
• Step 5: Remove paper, and set aside for a few seconds (this is why you need the vinyl tablecloth so you can set the paper down and not care about your surface.)
• Step 6: Take the paper to the sink and thoroughly rinse the starch from the paper. The paint will not rinse away.

• Step 7: Layout the paper to dry
• Step 8: Iron the paper flat

Below are two samples from the batch we did. Some were very vibrant and swirly, others were faint and subtle patterns.