Make Your Own Marbled Paper

Marbled paper is a great addition to any craft, such as scrapbooking or creating your own homemade gift cards. Buying pre-decorated papers can be expensive, but making your own marbled paper is a cinch- and looks just beautiful once it's done! Here is the super easy way you can make marbled paper of your very own!

What you need to make your own marbled paper is an easily absorbent paper, such as printing paper or even handmade paper (but any paper will work so long as it's acid-free), liquid starch (size), acrylic paints, and a 10" by 12" inch disposable foil pan (or basically any pan at least the size of your paper). The pan can be reused as you see fit, as you can use one application of liquid starch over and over again and just scrape the color out of it to make more marbled paper of varying colors and designs.

Pour liquid starch into the foil pan so you can no longer see the bottom of the pan. Dilute (thin) the acrylic paints you will be using with water so they mix better in the liquid starch (size) and don't sink. Slightly thicker than the consistency of water will do for the paints. Use an eye dropper to apply the thinned acrylic paint(s) to the size until you have completely covered the surface of the liquid starch with paint colors of your choosing. The paint will not mix together and should not sink.

Take a wooden skewer, or even a butter knife, to gently swirl the paint around and create a design of your choosing. The liquid starch will keep the paint firm on the surface and keep you able to move the paint around until you get the marbling effect of your choice. Be careful to avoid creating bubbles, as this will leave white spots on your paper once you transfer the design (kinda like a stamp) onto your paper. You want the design to be smooth, and the design you create in the paint on your liquid starch will be the design that you get on paper. The paper gets the best marbled effect when you use 2 or more contrasting colors, particularly white.

To transfer the marbled look in the foil pan to your paper, lay the paper on top of the paint and allow it to pick up the design. The thinned acrylic paints will transfer easily, so don't apply too much pressure to the paper- simply set it in the design you've created in the liquid starch and the paint will transfer. Don't push on, swirl, or tilt the paper to get the paint to transfer or this will ruin your design.

Lift the paper out of the foil pan and place it on plexiglass (or a cutting board, which is what I use - I bought one from the dollar store) and take a cup of water to the paper to remove the excess liquid starch (some will get on the paper with the color) and gently rinse off the paper. I suggest rinsing off the paper over the sink or outside so you don't get color everywhere. The color and design will stay on the paper, and all you have to do is hang the paper up to dry. Voila! Homemade marbled paper!

If making a lot of marbled papers at once (which is what I do) simply use an old newspaper to lift out the rest of the paint color from the liquid starch, and repeat the painting process. It's a fun way to make your own marbled paper (yes, you can even use regular plain printing paper) and get a cool design to use for making cards or scrapbooking! Particularly great for acrylic paints that are almost gone and can't really be used for painting, this is a great craft. In my experience, you can make about 2 or 3 marbled papers from one design. Tons of fun and easy!

Source:

Learned at a church activity for scrapbooking