A school of fish: Marbled Paper Jupiters

Monday, May 18, 2020

Marbled Paper Jupiters

While looking for activity ideas, I ran across this post about Marbled Jupiters and was intrigued by the idea. We've done paper marbling before and I've always wanted to revisit it, since it didn't work perfectly last time (but was still fun!). This is also just the sort of thing that I only manage to gear up for if I have to, for a school unit! I am not normally a person who loves to do crafts with children, but when I make the effort, the kids always have so much fun!

The "marbled Jupiters" post has some instructions about paper marbling, but I thought it was explained even better here. In case that link ever breaks, here are the basic instructions:

1. Pour 2 cups of liquid starch (you get it in a large bottle by the laundry products in any grocery store--it looks like this) in a wide pan, then add 1/2 tsp alum, stirring until mixed. The alum helps the paint stick to your paper, and I think this is a key ingredient we were missing last time we tried marbling paper! The paint clung to our paper (we used cardstock, but I've also read that watercolor paper works well) much better this time!

2. Take several colors of acrylic paint and put several drops each into bowls or paper cups, one color per bowl. Mix a little water into each color of paint to thin it and make it easier to drop.

3. With an eye-dropper or just with a spoon, drop several drops of the paint onto the top of the liquid starch/alum solution.

4. Gently swirl and marble the paint with a skewer or a plastic knife. (At this point, since we were making Jupiters, we also tried to make some storm-like features, and even a Great Red Spot.)

5. Lay a sheet of paper gently on top of the starch/paint bath, pressing down firmly. You can submerge the paper slightly.

6. Rinse the paper in a clear water bath. (The paint won't wash off—amazingly! Because of the alum, I think.)

7. Lay the paper on a flat surface to dry, but be careful—the starch will make it sticky and once it dries it may stick to your surface! Maybe we'll try using wax paper as a drying surface next time.