Crafting Revisit: Spray Paint Marbling


Last fall I made my first spray paint marbling batch.  It was so much fun that I knew I wanted to do it again. I slowly acquired some of the tools I needed to make it even better this time (or so I thought). I bought a box of vinyl gloves, a bag of bamboo skewers to make a paint comb, and a bunch of new spray paint. I finally had everything I needed and the weather was cooperating to work outside again.


I grabbed a scrap piece of cardboard and a roll of duct tape (in stylin' purple) and taped the tops of the bamboo skewers about a half inch apart and taped them down.  I used a pen as a spacer so that they would stay equidistant apart and fairly straight. I thought about using a ruler and marking with a line, but I'm lazy, and this seemed to work out pretty well.


After my skewers were all taped, I taped over the whole thing to make a neat and tidy handle.  I went ahead and made a second comb with the tines about an inch apart too.


Then I set up everything outside on the patio table and got to work.  I donned my gloves and sprayed some paint into my tub of water.


I knew from the last time that I did this project that I needed to work fast.  So I sprayed my colors and grabbed one of my new combs.


The paint just clumped on the comb and did not create pretty patterns. I also learned that the Krylon paint that says it dries in 10 minutes--doesn't work so hot for this.  It clumps up almost immediately. If you worked really fast, you could sort of get it to work. The regular Krylon indoor/outdoor paint works ok.  The Rustoleum spray paint (especially the 2X paint) seems to work better than Krylon spray paint for this particular project.


So I set out to do new marbling designs and use fancy new colors, and it turned out that most of what I did last time is what worked best: use dark colors, shake the bin (I had a little luck with stirring the paint with a single bamboo skewer), and plop your paper down as fast as possible.  If you mess around trying to get the colors just right or taking pictures, you end up with gloppy paint and big voids.  The gloves, though, they worked great! I highly recommend wearing gloves.


Here's my collection of new marbled paper.  I don't have time this week to make anything with it, but stay tuned--school's almost out!


This one is my favorite and actually was made with one of the Krylon 10 minute paints (the purple), so it will work if you're super fast, but it's not as flexible as the Rustoleum.

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