marbelized art

The DIY I'm sharing with you today is easy, inexpensive, and colorful.  I'm always looking for colorful art for my walls. 

 

 

I loved Oh happy day's tutorial on how to marbleize ribbon (isn't that the coolest!) so I thought I would try it on a few small canvases I had.  If it turned out, great, and if not I would just paint over them.  This is the attitude I have to have with all diys because goodness knows I've had lots of fails.

What you need:
shallow pan that you won't mind tossing when you're done
3-5 colors of fingernail polish--get the cheap kind
skewer or tongs, I used popsicle sticks because I bought a package in 1988 and still have so many
canvas or whatever you are wanting to marbleize
cover your surface because this can be messy
Since this is way smellier than you would think, open windows or do this outside.

Fill pan with a few inches of water

You'll want to do the next few steps super fast because the fingernail polish dries quickly when it's in the water--this is why there are no photos of dipping the canvases in the water.

Open the polishes and pour them into water, use skewer to drag paint around a little.

Dip the surface of your canvas in the water.  It really just needs to touch the surface, don't plunge it deep. The canvas will grabbed the paint instantly. 

Raise it up but leave it facedown for a few seconds to allow it to drip.  Turn your canvas over (do this move quickly so the paint stays in its original place) and put on covered surface to dry. 

I also did the same thing for the edges, but you could leave them white if you want.

It's always nice to have the help of a buddy when you're doing a project!

After we finished all of them , we put them in the garage to dry overnight because we didn't want them to dry outside but also didn't want our entire family to get loopy from the fumes.  Using a flattened box as a drop cloth makes carrying them easy.

I hung my favorite three together on a narrow wall space.  You could use larger canvases but you'd need to have a large enough container for the water and polish that you wouldn't mind throwing away when you're finished.