Crafting by not a very crafty mum - marbled paper cards

Marbled paper tutorials starting appearing on my Pinterest feeds. Some of them were so beautiful and it sounded easy. With Easter approaching it was a chance to try it out. The final result turned out better than I thought, considering I completely fudged the process!

I read through quite a lot of tutorials that I googled. They all used shaving cream, but they varied in what paper, paints, etc they used. Shopping is getting harder with Little E. He is nearly 2 and a half and my corridors echo with "I don't want to!" Nipping out for some shaving cream can turn into a half an hour battle to get his coat on.

So, I thought I would have a go with what I had in the house. I had foaming hair mousse, some left over finger paints and standard white printer paper. That'll do...

I have no photos of the process, as there was foam and paint everywhere to contend with! Little E also lost interest quickly. He loved the hair mousse (as always), but he didn't understand why we weren't playing with our Arctic toys in the foam like we usually do. I didn't mind. It was finally a sunny spring day and afterwards we went outside with his Artic toys to splash around in buckets of water.

I'll try to explain what we did, but I recommend looking up some proper tutorials.

First step was the only prep I did. I lined a baking tray with foil. Ours has a nice deep edge to it, so I thought that would work well.

Step two was to let Little E play with the foam and fill the tray. He liked this!

Step three was to squeeze paint into the foam. The finger paints I had were in little tubes, so Little E enjoyed giving them a good squeeze, even though he was confused why we were doing this.

Step four is then to swirl the paint around in the foam to make patterns. This is where my process fell down. The mousse didn't support the paint and it mainly sunk to the bottom of the tray. We did get some paint brushes and mix it about, but Little E couldn't really see what was happening, so I am sure this is why he gave up.

Step five is to press your paper onto the foam and soak up all those beautiful swirly patterns you have made. I thought mine wasn't going to work at all. However, I could see the paint was lurking at the bottom, so I just pressed down firmly until the paper made contact. I could easily see the paint soaking into the paper. The foam was so wet that the colours were transferred easily. Fortunately, I had baking parchment paper standing by to transfer our soaking wet paper onto. I made two sheets. Little E enjoyed watching me do this part and seemed impressed.

And...it didn't look too bad! 

Certainly not some of the fabulous patterns I had seen online, but I was pleased. It was definitely something I could work with.

When the paper was dry, I used a template to cut out bunny shapes. I placed it over where there seemed to be the best mix of colours. I felt the centre was too uniformly red.

Stick them to card and add an appropriate pun...

My final thoughts are that the process of marbling was easy and fun. I am sure it is something we will try again. Little E is still young and I'm experimenting with ideas that I have never heard of. I would definitely try with proper shaving cream next time. Making the cards took no time at all and I made a bunch in probably 15 minutes. I still have loads of left over marbled paper to make more if I need to.

Toddlers - keep it simple, stupid!

"Keep it simple, stupid."

Wise words from my medical registrar when I was struggling with the complexities of lymphomas and leukaemias. As soon as I realised it was her job to worry about that stuff and mine to get on with the day to day ward work, it all got a lot easier!

I liked the phrase and it has been a useful concept over the years.

I've been thinking about the simple things recently.

It probably started when we got some big cardboard boxes. It was exciting thinking about what I could make and I got really interested in making a castle. Loads of images on Pinterest are, of course, really quite elaborate creations.

You can also buy them ready made...It's all a bit intimidating.

When we first got the boxes, we purely used them as tunnels, which Little E loved.

However, they were losing their structural integrity, so one nap time, I opened them up and made a big circle. It looked pretty lame, but no time for anything else.

Little E came down from his nap, his eyes lit up and he cried out "A castle!" He played with it for days and we still get them out from time to time.

We also have a box full of packing pellets leftover from Christmas, which I don't think we ever leave my house. 

This has been a sensory toy, something to hide in, fake snow/rubble for the diggers, "leaves" to sweep up and currently...a bubble bath!

We also have a cardboard tube from a roll of wrapping paper that Little E loves. It even makes it into bed with his cuddly toys. It's a sword, a magic wand, a tunnel for cars, a trumpet... We have done nothing to it to make it these things, it just transforms in Little E's head.

It's made me realise that sometimes when we try too hard and make something for our children, we are ruining it for them! A box can be anything, but a cardboard car is a cardboard car.

Keep it simple, stupid!