Playing with Marbles

Before I left home for Oak Ridge, I was fortunate enough to participate in a marbled paper workshop taught by the multi-talented Kelley Walker.  Check out her web site here.  When I took the class I thought I would probably never get all the tools and supplies together to try it on my own, but eventually I did, and now I’m fully appreciating how very difficult it is to get marbled prints as good as the ones Kelley does.  Nearly every one of my prints has a blob or some other funky little goober of paint right in the middle, but they’re mine, and I love them anyway. Here are some books I’ve made with my very amateurish prints, and if you scroll way down, you can see some of the prints that turned out to be not-so-bad, all things considered.

This is an accordion book with a cigar band closure. Bob Meadows gave a workshop at Jerry’s Artarama in October and this is one of the types of books we made.

Inside the book are 4 little pamphlet stitch books.

Pick a print–any print–and make a book. How to choose, though. This one had various faults that advertise the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing, but I liked the contrast, so I decided to use it for a book cover.

Here’s the cover and the signatures ready for binding.

This is my favorite of all the prints. It’s a page from a discarded atlas with marbling over the top.

Here’s a page from an outdated dictionary.

Scroll down for more marbled papers.