Crafting for grown-ups. Or something close.

Hi! I’m Jess.

I hate most crafting. I am the only person I know with a kid under five who doesn’t scrapbook, I couldn’t knit anything to save my life, (and just might endanger my life trying) and sometimes seeing my daughter coming with the coloring book (AGAIN) is enough to give me hives.

So since my three year old loooves doing crafts (possibly even more than Dora, which is saying a lot) and since I love my three year old, I thought I’d better find some things I could do with her and not fall asleep while doing them. But I’m a big girl and want to do big girl things, not any of which include Dora, Barbies, or fluffy bunnies. Crafting for grown-ups. Or something close.

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Today we printed marbleized paper. It’s easy, quick, and really pretty cool.

You need a few basic things.

Cheapo foam shaving cream

Food coloring

Cookie sheet

Paper

A pen or something to swirl with

A piece of stiff cardboard to scrape off the paper.

Something to cover your table with. We use cheap white towels, because I have lots of them and don’t care if they stain. (They’re from the year I spent touring with Aerosmith*.)

Additional stuff that’s nice: rubber gloves if you’re concerned about your hands, a small wastebasket to scrape the used foam into.

 

Okay! Let’s go!

 

1. Squirt foam over the cookie sheet. It feels nice. Use your fingers, spread it out, kind of leveling. If you have kids, they’ll love to help with this bit. And a palm full of shaving cream is easy to use as the Shaving Cream Monster. Blaaaargh!

2. Pick your colours and drip over the shaving cream. Kids like rainbows and will probably want to use every colour.

3. Using a pen, swirl the shaving cream. You don’t have to press down too deeply. Don’t overmix. When you’re happy with the way it looks, (or mesmerized by ooh the pretty colours)

4. Press a piece of paper onto it. Lightly. Run your fingers over the back and make sure all the paper comes into contact with the cream.

5. Grab one corner and tug up. As it pulls up, it will look ruined. Smeared and awful. But take heart. Grab your scraper. Start scrapin’. Scrape all the foam off.

6. If you have a really pretty one, you can get three or four more prints off the same ‘picture’.

7. Clean up is a breeze! And smells good!

 

So. So far so good. But what if you want to get away from rainbow streaks and splotches?

 

Try using more complementary colors. Study the color charts on the back of the food coloring box. We made some awesome ones using two colours of yellow and a green.

 

We also tried putting a little water and some serious amounts of food coloring in a spray bottle, and spraying the whole sheet with a background colour. I think I needed industrial strength stuff for that, as I just got a wishy-washy pink.

 

But what to do with these?

First off, iron’em. Quick hot iron -  it’ll make them crisper..

 

Then, some ideas:

Origami paper

Gift Wrap! How cool to get something wrapped with one of these!

Decoupage…well, anything, really.

Cut intricate shapes, shellac them, and glue them to posts or use tiny silver wires – paper earrings!

Make your resume be....memorable!

Use slightly thicker paper and make cards. (I made one here for my mom, who loves bright colors and doesn’t do e-mail so much)

Or you could use them as mats and frame that collection of X-Files trading cards you’ve been wondering what to do with for the last fifteen years….

 

Oh, is that just me?

 

 

*No, not really. But it does make the story a little better than just having a plethora of crappy towels in the house.

 

Comments

[motherbumper]

I think the blue-yellow combo would compliment Mulder's eyes very nicely. What? We are the only two X-fans out there?

[kittenpie]

I like this - it's a simpler, easier-to-do version of japanese marbled paper, where you have to be careful about floating the colours and the paper, so it makes it accessible to wee ones. Good stuff!

[SAJ]

FUN! I'll totally do this!

[Elizabeth]

That is awesome. So pretty, so easy!

[kgirl]

i am so doing this tomorrow. no scrapbooks for me.

[nomotherearth]

What a great idea! My son will love this.

I hate scrapbooking too. Why do you think I blog??