I had a post ready for yesterday. I wrote it up before I started working on the novel. But I just didn’t actually feel like posting it. So I’m doing this today instead.

On Sunday I got together with a couple of people and we had a marbling party — where we marbled paper. I’ve done this for the last few years, made marbled paper over Thanksgiving weekend, to use with holiday cards to send to people.

One of the first things you have to do is stir the colors. If you marble right after you stir you have something like what you see in my icon (also known as a get gel pattern.)

After you stir the colors, you rake a comb across it. That’s the nonpariel pattern, and the simplest of them all.

After you make the nonpariel pattern, you start to get fancy with swirls, curls, fans, etc. You have to be careful and not overwork the pattern. You also have to lay down the paper to collect the colors sooner rather than later, or they’ll start to fade and drift.

	red and green A traditional nonpariel pattern. That actually is green, not just white between the red swirls. And this was the first piece of the evening.
	Swirls Swirls created after nonpariel pattern established
	detail Detail of above
	purple and blue
	red and yellow This was done with the other paper, so I have two pieces from this.
	other half of the red and yellow Because the pan was so large we could do two pieces of the smaller paper in it. This is the other half of the other red and yellow.
	red and blue A little over worked, not enough contrasting colors, but still pretty.
	purple and yellow First half
	Purple and yellow second half
	red and green fans We ended up remixing the green because the original color never really showed up. This is the mixed green, (green, yellow, blue). With a bit of the regular blue thrown in. This is the first half.
	red and green This is the second half of that same green and red. Amazing effects that you can do.