Make marbled paper with shaving cream

Marbled paper can be used for holiday cards, gift tags and other uses throughout the year. This month, we'll make marbled paper using shaving cream and your choice of dye: food dye, acrylic paint or liquid water colors. We tested food dye and acrylic paint for you.

You'll need:

• A baking pan, baking dish or big lid in which to spread the shaving cream.
• A pressurized can of shaving cream. You need the white stuff, not gel.
• White paper of a decent stock. I bought this pack of 12x18 construction paper 18 months ago and still have some left.
• Some kind of somewhat liquid-y paint. You can use food dye, acrylic paint, tempera paint or liquid water colors. We tested food dye and acrylic paint for you.
• A long, thin stick to mix the paint in the shaving cream. We used kebab sticks and paint brush handles.
• Spatula
• Something to cover your work surface and paper towels for finger and spatula clean up.

First, fill the pan with shaving cream and level it out a little bit with a spatula if necessary.

Then, drip some paint on top of the shaving cream. This is acrylic paint. I squeezed the paint bottles but let my student pick the colors and point to where I should put the paint.

When we used food dye, I let my student squeeze the bottles because the dye was expired and the bottles were small. =)

Then, let your student swirl the paint with their stick. Complimentary colors, like red and green, can turn into mud with an enthusiastic stirrer. We have better results with similar colors like red and yellow, or green and blue.

Then place your paper on the swirled shaving cream and pat down so the entire paper is covered. Be careful to not pat so hard shaving cream leaks out the sides and you mess up your design. (Parents pat the first time to demonstrate)

Remove your paper and place it on a covered surface. Use your spatula to scrape the shaving cream off the paper. Don't attempt to paint it into the paper any further. Really scrape it off. However, don't scrape so hard you tear your paper. Just hard enough to get the shaving cream off in one pass. (This is the fun, amazing part!)

Below are our food dye pages. No smearing at all, kind of looks like water colors.

Below are our acrylic paint pages. Brighter and more like marble, but a little smear-y.

Use your marbled paper for holiday cards or gift tags. You can also frame them and display during the appropriate holiday or year 'round!