Marbleize Paper With Shaving Cream: a Background Technique

I'm sure many of you have at least seen this technique elsewhere on the internet, but I want this section of the blog to be a good and extensive resource of background techniques. And this is a fun one.

This technique makes you wonder who was it that had this idea in the first place. Do you think it was some sort of happy accident?

Make sure you get the white foam shaving cream and not the gel. The gel won't work.

And I've heard you can also do this technique using watercolor or thinned acrylic. But, I've only used alcohol inks.

The first step is to spray the cream all over a plastic plate or another non-absorbent surface you don't mind getting ink on.

The only shaving cream I had when I made this tutorial was a travel-sized one. My husband has had a beard for a while now and I'm surprised we had any at all.

But anyway, it was a small amount. So, I spread my cream around a little with a butter knife.

Next, grab a couple or a few different colors of alcohol ink and squeeze random dots over the shaving cream.

Next, you're going to want to get a dowel, or something similar (I used a coffee stir straw) and swirl the ink around in the shaving cream.

And now take your piece of card stock and lay it on top of the shaving cream and push down just a little bit so it picks up the cream.

I planned on using this technique for a little mini book I was making and my paper was longer than the plate, so I did one half at a time.

Here's what it looks like when you lift off the paper:

There should be enough left for another application, so I was able to do both sides.

And check it out when the shaving cream evaporates:

Doesn't that look cool?

You'll have to wipe off the residue that gets left but the coloring stays the same.

I had enough cream left after I finished this one, that I was able to add some more ink and make another:

And here's the little book I made:

And If you like using alcohol ink, check out these two techniques: