How to Marble Paper

As part of my unit on traditional art forms I thought I'd introduce my students to bookbinding, and the part that decorative paper plays in it. I started by handing them each a book and having them point to the front, the back, the spine, the head, the foot, the endpages. I showed them a book, mid-binding to show them what a signature was, a text block, let them feel uncovered book board. We looked at various hand-bound books: pamphlet books, link stitched books, accordian books, book boxes, and portfolios. THEN we talked about types of books: novels, poetry books, dictionaries, alphabet books, comic books, quote books, journals, sketch books, autograph books, pop-up books, the more you discuss it, the more types you remember. I showed them books I have that use marbled paper. Then we were ready to marble paper, and within the hour lesson, 4-5 kids had a completed project.

The idea of viscosity is really important in this process. The water must be thicker than the paint in order for the paint to sit on top. There must be a thickening agent such as starch or a little geletin for it to work. I got a kit from Dick Blick that had a powder called "water thickener."  The hotter the water the better when  whisking in the powder, and it's better to add it little by little is better than plopping in a couple stable spoons, as we soon found with too many lumps. You'll want to wait half an hour before using also. Which is why my first period started with this (calculating, measuring, mixing) before our book discussion.  The paper must also be prepped by sponging it with a water and addisive powder also found in the kit. Be sure to do this at least 30 minutes ahead as well. I had students each class period prepare paper for the following period. Pay it forward and it saves everyone time.

Finally the fun part! Choosing and placing colors is an interesting process. Each little drop expands quickly and takes over the majority of the water. It's a good idea to start with the light colors, but patterns of dark and light also work well. We liked to create dots in concentric circles to make bullseyes because they make twice the lines when it comes time to swirl them. Long lines inside of lines works really well too. It's important not to squeeze too much paint at a time, because it will all sink to the bottom.

Swirling is even more satisfying than dropping the paint in the water. We combed through the circles trying to keep the teeth moving perpendicular to any lines that needed crossing. This is what gives it a nice marbled effect. Some students moved to quickly and things got a little messy, but most enjoyed the process. Once the swirls are how you'll want to catch them quickly by placing your paper, treated side down on top of the water. (I tried to put an X on the back side of paper before treating it because once they dry it's hard to remember what side was treated. It's also important to write student names on the back of the paper before marbeling because it will be to wet to write immediately following and lots of students can make lots of paper pretty quickly and get confusing later on).

You can use knives and forks, or combs that you find around the house, or you can make your own combs. We stuck bamboo skewers into cardboard at different spacings for different effects. A piece of tape keeps them from sliding up and down through the corrugations.

Then comes the most exciting part. Pulling the paper out of the water. There were always gasps and oo's and ahhhs during this part. If you're making a lot, you'll probably want to use latext gloves. Drain off the excess, and you can lay it down face up for a minute or two before gently rinsing off the extra sizing under a thin stream of water. It feels slimy from all of the starch so try to get off the excess without power-blasting it. Holding the paper with the water running down like a waterfall is better than holding it flat. You don't want to get the back too wet because most paper will get soggy and start falling apart.

It was fun to see the choices of color that students used. Some only choose two colors (like blue and white) while others wanted to do every color a bunch of times.

We experimented using colored paper, and it was fun to see how the paint colors came out differently depending on the under color.

A couple students opted out of combing and swirling their paint at all and that made for some fun images as well. 

Ultimately, this assignment had a big "wow" factor and my students became so obsessed with making marbled paper that I had other teachers telling me that they were hearing about it in their classrooms. We covered ELA (books), science (viscosity), math (measuring, doubling, ratios), and Art within the matter of an hour before letting students play with their own ideas for the next few class periods. It only took me 13 years to try this out, but we may have to do it again some time.

 

Repoussé project

 The word repoussé comes from the French word, "to push" and essentially means to push the metal from the back of a piece of metal foil to create an embossed image. 

This was the first project in my class unit on relief sculpture. It is an easy way to create tactile images for my students who are blind.

Students began with sketches of ideas, one of which they chose to transfer to a thick piece of tooling foil. If the foil is set on a piece of chip board or stack of paper you can trace a drawing with a pen and it will transfer to the foil with embossed lines. But my blind students had to re-"draw" their ideas using Wiki Stix, which they could then trace to make the embossed lines.

Rubbing with a rounded plastic stick pushes the foil from back to the front to make your the front raised or budge out. Then rubbing around the form with a flat stick makes it pop out even more. Edges are re-defined and cleaned up with sharp pointed points. For large areas, we found the lids or bottoms of fat Sharpie markers worked pretty well for repoussé.

Then most students opted to color their images with Sharpies. These colors are more bright and permenant than our normal Mr. Sketch on the foil.

Then students painted the entire surface with black paint, whether they'd colored the surface or not. It's important to get into the cracks so the lines show up on the final product.

While the paint is still wet, begin wiping gently in circular motions with a paper towel. You'll go throughs several of them as they get dirty pretty quickly. You want the raised portions to really have a shine, while the cracks should be able to stay black. Reveal as many details as possible without overwiping.

Younger children can wrap boards with thick string or yarn and cover it with aluminum foil and just rub with their fingers to make an embossed foil project. This student chose to use greens and blues to fill the shapes using Sharpie markers.