Marbling Ideas and Info

After my WOYWW post quite a few of you have asked for info on how I did my marbling so I'm doing an extra post today with photos of the simple stages. I've played around with several inks but I find the easy marble pots really are the easiest and are readily available at art or craft shops. 

Whilst there are more detailed and complex methods here I'm doing it the simple way and marbling with water as the carrier so it's best and easier to just use the right paint.

Note that the paint is not permanent , just decorative, and therefore will not wash. Here's the link for Marabu who make them.

To decorate the eggs you'll need a large jam jar of water (not too full so it doesn't overflow when items are plunged), kebab skewers (around £1 for 100) a piece of wire or a pointy tool, plastic eggs, 3 or more colours of easy marble paints. HobbyCraft have eggs quite cheaply BTW.
Late note... found packets of 12 eggs at The Works for 99p... (make sure you get the plastic ones as they also have polystyrene eggs which aren't quite as effective.)

Drip 3 or 4 drops of each colour onto the surface of the water.

Swirl around with the tip of a metal point

Push a skewer into a plastic egg then plunge into the water, twisting as it goes down. It doesn't look too good yet and it is serendipity as to the results achieved.

It is fascinating to see what emerges.

Sometimes just amazing!

Add tags and ribbons and they can then be displayed amongst Spring greenery for Easter

I also tried marbling shapes cut out of white mountboard and I think this has great prospects for more experiments.

These cut outs were all dipped into the colours in the jam jar exactly in the same way as the eggs but I pushed a cocktail stick into each item or held it with tweezers.

All these items can be stamped, decorated with flowers, gems, glitter etc, depending on their final use.

If you want to marble pieces of card then have the water in a bigger flat tray slightly bigger than the card to be marbled so the inks do not waste. You only then need to add drops for the surface area needed.

With an extra swirl this tray of water produced this result on card....

The small piece of card, bottom right, was made by picking up the residue ink in the tray.

I hope this inspires you to have a play and have fun... I did !!!