Thursday, August 12, 2010

Artwork-a-day - Marbelized Shaving Cream Prints

My artwork-a-day project got slightly delayed. I'm afraid on some days this month, there was no art. But there were always artful thoughts and I counted cooking because taste is essential. Now that berries are in season, my freshly made fruit juices are truly works of art, in my opinion. Be that as it may...

Jackson has suffered a couple of migraines in the past two weeks. And when I say migraine, I mean, MIGRAINE. The poor kid--Jesus. His dad used to get the same symptoms which I won't go into here. Anyway, Jesus. So we've been taking it easy just gaining a foothold on health once more and it's going well. Today was a sit-under-the-patio-umbrella day (finally it got hot outside--there was even a blimp over our house--I don't know why), so we made some messy art, which was actually fairly clean because it's shaving cream art, people. That's right: scented, soapy spray foam. That's what I'm talking about.

I learned how to do this on the Artful Parent blog. That name is a little bit pretentious but it's a cool blog with good ideas. I will now walk you through the steps and lest you think I'm being a too domestic (and artful), I will admit that shaving cream art conjures up images of youthful vandalism that I won't divulge here, save to say, I can't remember which eats auto paint more, shaving cream or whipped cream. So I just won't use those things on autos anymore, even in fun.

Get some cheap shaving cream at the dollar store or at Big Lots! like I did. Then squirt it in a tray for a while. This part was fun so we did two trays.
We had some liquid watercolors in droppers so we used those. You can also use food coloring or acrylic paints. Jackson chose to use all the colors, of course. Swirl them around with your hands (goopy) or a stick.
We both agreed, this part looked very cool. Jackson just wanted to keep this as the art.
But process beckoned. Press your paper gently on the shaving cream.
Peel it back. Eww, kind of colorfully barfy, but nicely scented.
Let it sit for a few minutes (I went longer because my landlord showed up to fix some plumbing--you know how THAT goes). Then wipe off with something. I used a micro-fleece towel which actually worked well. The actual instructions recommend a ruler or cardboard scraper. That would have been more fun in a squeegee sort of way.
Wah la! We tried shiny paper and regular. I used the regular for wrapping paper for my niece's birthday presents. The shiny paper will probably be cut up for cards. Barbisol-scented stationery--that's the power of art.

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