Make It Monday: Marble Painting

I had plans for an outside painting craft, but with temps in the nineties and a heat advisory in effect, I switched to an indoor project instead. It's always smart to have a backup plan.

Painting with marbles is easy, cheap, and provides plenty of smiles all around. 

We started with dipping the marble into the paint and then rolling it around the paper by shaking and tipping the box. (We used a USPS medium flat rate box, cut in half.) Jake and Alyssa had a lot of fun watching the blank canvass become streaked with splashes of color as the marble bounced around. The final product had a somewhat speckled look.

We eventually just squirted the paint directly on the paper. It became a game to try to get the marble to roll through the paint, spreading the color over the paper. If there was a big glob, the marble would get stuck in the goop until the kids shook the box enough to loosen it and make a design. As Jake broke up the dollops, he would proclaim, "I'm destroying it!" This technique of placing the paint right on the paper was their favorite. And it certainly was the most colorful too.

Ten pages, plenty of paint, and an hour later, I called it quits. If they had their way, they would have rolled and bounced, wiggled and jiggled until they used up every last drop of paint they could find.

And then they would have made their own. They're crafty like that.

Want to see their painting in action? Watch our video of marble painting. It's guaranteed to bring a few smiles.