Friday the kids and I channeled our inner Pollock and made some art. I’d seen something about marble painting somewhere on the internets (think it’s on one of my Pinterest boards) but I never actually read the web page. Still, the idea stuck with me and I thought it would be fun to do with the kids on my day off.
The idea is super simple. You tape paper to a rimmed cookie sheet and roll marbles around to paint with. We tried it two ways:
In the first method, we dipped the marbles into the paint (we just used my stock of random colors of acrylic craft paints), then dropped them on the paper.
This was quite a bit more messy, what with having to retrieve the marbles from the cups of paint, but it produced a really neat effect.
In the second method, we blobbed the paint onto the paper and then dropped a bunch of marbles on it, then rolled them around.
This produced something a bit different, but nonetheless interesting, painting. This was much faster and slightly less messy, since they just squeezed bottles of paint and then rolled the tray around.
Either way, rolling the tray around was big fun for both kids and they both really liked doing this and the paintings it created. Tray rolling was easier for Tabby than Ben, though I think he had the heavier cookie sheet (it had higher sides, so I thought it would be easier for him to not lose his marbles). Ben’s was about half marble painting and about half finger painting. He just loved getting his mitts in the paints and cleanup was non-trivial, though not too bad.
Tabby, at 4.5, was an excellent age for this. She could do it and get great results and not make too much mess. Ben, at 2 and a bit, enjoyed it hugely, but it was definitely a lot more cleanup on his end of the table. Next go-around I’d think about laying down a table cloth (wipe-off) and putting them in the folding chairs.
The end result looks pretty in our dining room. They’d also make great wrapping paper.
SO fun!! In our mommy and me class, we’ve done spider webs for halloween — black paper, white paint for marbles, spider stamps in orange and purple paint. Oh, and this year we did zebras! Zebras cut out in white paper, black paint for marbles, glue on blue paper background and glue on leaves from outside to make the ‘jungle’! So glad we take that class because I rarely make time to do crafts at home… always want to be better. Good for you for carving out some time for fun with the kids!
I won a city-wide art contest doing that in a kindergarten class project. I remember it vividly. I think we used the top of printer-paper boxes instead of cookie sheets.
Great project. Have to do this with Olivia.