Making Marbleized Artwork

Category Painting

A marble look artwork made from nail polish.

Create beautiful marbleized artwork on paper using cooking oil and food colors or water and nail polish. This is a great project of kids as well; younger ones will likely need guidance. The instructions and photos follow.

Solutions

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Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art

By attosa [1,115 Posts, 5,068 Comments]

April 30, 2018

This is a fun way to marblize paper with food colouring and oil, using no harmful chemicals. Since oil and water don't mix, the food colouring only stains the paper where the oil doesn't settle, creating beautiful and exciting scenes. Hold the finished works up to the light and you'll see amazing patterns in your newly translucent paper. This is a fantastic and low-cost craft to do with kids.

Total Time: 20 minutes, plus dry time

Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art - examples of the finished pages

Supplies:

cooking oil
food colouring
a cup or bowl per color
fork
baking dish filled with water
card stock or regular paper

Steps:

Pour a small amount of oil into the cups or bowls.

Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art - pour a little oil into each bowl or cup

Add some food colouring to the oil.

Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art - add food coloring

Mix the colours and oils vigorously with the fork.

Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art - mix vigorously with a fork

Gently pour or drop the oil colours into the dish of water.

Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art - gently pour or drop the oil colors into the dish of water

Immediately lay a piece of paper on the water.

Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art- lay paper over the water

Add more colours and repeat the process.

Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art - add more colors and repeat the process

To get different types of patterns or colour saturation, pour the oil colours directly onto the paper and let it roll around.

Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art - for more saturation oil and water can be poured directly on the paper and rolled around

Let the papers dry.

Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art - allow papers to dry

Hold them up to the light for the beautiful translucence. This one was thinner paper.

Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art - if you use thinner paper it will be translucent when held up to the light

Thicker card stock pieces make for awesome backings to homemade cards.

Oil and Food Colouring Marble Art - thicker cardstock prints can be used to make cards

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Marbleized Artwork

By Amber E. [10 Posts, 273 Comments]

October 31, 2019

This is a fun, simple way to create eye stunning and unique artwork without having to have any artistic talent. You can use this technique on countless objects to gain the same marbleized look, but for this project I've chosen canvas panels.

All you need is the object you want marbleized, a bin filled with water, and nail polish and you too will soon be creating beautiful artwork and decorations.

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