Technique of the Week: "Young at Art and Young at Heart" by Marj Marion

By Marj Marion

I love my role as Nana to my five grandchildren, and they love it when I bring an art project with me when I travel to see them and provide g-kid care.  One of their first questions upon my arrival is “Did you bring an art project?”.  That warms my heart! Many of you are young at heart, and you might have fun giving this a try…it’s fun for adults as well.

Supplies:

Assorted plastic or metal trays or boxes, a large pill/medicine keeper, some marbles or beads, card stock, and desired paints or re-inkers.  Also advised are some paper towels, rags and/or baby wipes for cleaning up.  Large self-closing tweezers or small plastic spoons are helpful. 

Optional: metallic embossing powders. Find marbles in the toy or floral sections of craft stores. Plastic trays or flat boxes can be found at the Dollar stores.

Here are some of the coloring options for marble painting. Choose one, two or more colors, but beware of making “mud” if you use too many colors!

Technique:

Put some paint or refill ink in the sections of the pill keeper. (or use a muffin tray or small plastic containers. If your paint is thick, you can dilute it some with water so the marbles will roll around easily. In the samples I made, I used diluted Dylusions paints, Martha Stewart Satin paints and assorted refills (Adirondack and Distress).

Place a marble in each section of the pill keeper and gently  move the pill keeper around so the marbles are coated with paint or refill ink.

Here you see the pill container, with various paints (first five sections) and re-inkers (last two sections) with the marbles. I suggest a god quality pill container as they close more securely and tightly. Note that the paint won't last very many days before drying out, so just use the amount for your "project of the day" and then rinse out your container.

Choose the size bin container you want, either the right size to hold a single A-2 panel, or consider a larger pan that will hold a full sheet of card stock, whichever you want. The full size paper allows you to make many art panels at once.

This shows a larger piece of card stock with marble “tracks” from two shades of dye ink refills. These paintings are lighter in color, and make a nice, subtle background.

Use long handled tweezers (look for these at Harbor Freight Tools) and grasp the marble. Place the marble on your paper in the tray, and tip the tray back and forth so it rolls all around. With children, you can use a tray or pan with a lid if needed to control the paint, but most kids can learn to just roll the pan back and forth, rather than shaking it. Kids can use a small spoon to retrieve the marble.

I usually do one color at a time. And, if you don’t like the first big blob of paint that occurs, you can place the marble at the edge of the paper before rolling it, or set the marble on a scrap paper to dab off a bit of the paint before placing it on the card stock in the tray.

For a variation, while the paint is wet on the card stock, you can sprinkle on some metallic embossing powder, and when paint is dry, heat the embossing powder until it melts.  The paint may bubble up some, but that makes nice texture.

The background above shows two colors of marble painting plus some gold embossing powder for accent.

Here are more photos of samples I made using this technique. You can change up the composition, and use contrasting paper, die cuts and stamping to complete your cards. These cards and marble painting samples are available to view at Art 'n Soul.

by Marj Marion

by Marj Marion

The finished card below shows the ink refill marble painting background, with "Inspire" by Impression Obsession, and the painting splatters from a Tim Holtz stencil. More info on the cards will be at Art 'n Soul. Come and see them in person!

by Marj Marion

This project was a lot of fun and my grandchildren really enjoyed doing this with me. I hope you will give it a try!