Marbled Galentine's Day Cards

Even though I am old and married I still can't help but hold on to a bit of awkward teenager girl hatred for Valentine's Day. I spent many a V-day getting only cards from my Dad because he felt bad for me, and complaining with my friends about our lack of boyfriends/romantic prospects. Fast forward 14 years and I think Valentine's Day is nice to spend with Charlie, but also take it as a time to let my friends know that I love them, and am glad they stuck with me even when I was awkward even though I am awkward. Last year I made V-Day Pouches which was a lot of work and cost a lot to ship.

I got the idea from this blog post about Water Marbling using nail polish. After gathering all of the supplies (latex gloves, nail polish, and a plastic salad tray from the cafeteria at school) I made three cards, got a headache from the nail polish, and the cards turned out really crappy.

This was the only remotely good one.

I was not sure what I was doing wrong, but the splitting headache made me not really want to continue trying. Or continue wasting my nail polish. After getting frustrated that it didn't work I read the comments on the blog post to see if anyone else had tried it and had less than stellar results. No one else had tried it, but other people had done marbling with shaving cream and food coloring. Aha! I thought, I can try that!

Luckily we had a snow day the very next day so after letting the dogs out and feeding them I got to work. We didn't have any food coloring, since we used it all decorating gingerbread houses, so I used paint. After a few tries it started to make sense to me and the results were pretty cool. I used a baking pan, Charlie's shaving cream (has to be cream, not gel), toothpicks, paint, and a pan scraper. One trick was to get the shaving cream one color with the paint and then add accent colors. I watered down the paint to make it more splattery (scientific word). I tried to apply the paint using the paint brush but found that flicking it with my fingers was easier, and more fun. Once there was a good amount of paint on the cream I used a toothpick with drag the paint around and make a marble effect. Then I put one card at a time onto the surface and pressed down. You have to re-do the paint every time, so no two cards are the same.

It was super messy. The biggest trick I learned was to take the card out of the mixture and let it sit for a while to let the paint dry underneath.

Then I used the pan scraper to scrape off the excess shaving cream. 1. Is just the shaving cream (those marks are from where I dropped my phone into the card oops! 2. First swipe 3. Second swipe and you're done.

I think they turned out pretty well. Not to take away from the marbling I left them plain, wrote inside, and sent them off to my friends. They all smelled like shaving cream, but I don't think anyone will mind. 

Happy Valentine's Day

Lauren!

P.S. The Galentine's Day title is referring to one of my favorite episode of Parks and Rec. I am crafty and over the top, but not as much as Leslie is, I'd never make a mosaic of my friends from broken soda bottles. I do love her though, and we share a birthday.