Alum Recipe For Marbling

With a coffee stirrer drop paint onto several spots on surface of size.

Alum recipe for marbling.

1 gallon of water to 8 tablespoons 1 3 cup of alum. Stir for 2 or 3 minutes till the alum is dissolved. Dissolve 2 tsp alum in 3 4 cup water. Without it the marbling will be faint and blurry.

Make a double recipe of liquid starch by dissolving 4 tbs. The size might be too thin or old. There are a lot of different recipes for mordanting fabric prior to marbling but with my natural dyeing experience to guide me i d like to share my method. It makes the colours adhere to the paper.

Marbling colors are too thick. The marbling paints sink to the bottom of the tray. Pour this mixture into a large marbling tray. Hang to completely dry before marbling.

A 20 x 26 will hold approximately 2 gallons of water. You can do this the night before. In this case you should apply the alum by the soaking method. Continue in this fashion adding color over color and letting paint spread out and form random shapes.

Corn starch in 1 2 cup cold water. Mark one side of your watercolor paper with an a and use a sponge brush to apply alum solution evenly to that side of the paper. Add another color dropping paint into middle of previous color if desired. Alum is a mordant meaning it causes color to set on the paper.

The trick to adhering the paint to fabric is presoaking the fabric in alum. If you marble on the wrong side the pigments will not properly adhere to the paper. The reasons behind this i have not been able to find out but it might historicaly have something to do with. Marbling on tragacanth does not requore alum but the paper must be dampened slighly to accept the colour.

Add water to thin the colors skim the marbling base then test. Alum is the third most important substance in marbling after the gall and the size. Add 1 teaspoon of methocel methocelulose powder per gallon of solution or throw out and start a new recipe. Now let s turn to fabric marbling.

Let pigment spread out 2 to 3 inches. Directions for fabric marbling. Mix 3 tablespoons alum per 1 quart of hot water. In recent posts i ve looked into the types of alum and the quantity necessary for marbling paper.

The recipe we use for the alum is. Lay a sheet of paper on the surface of this alum water. Buy pure aluminum sulfate from an art supply store or online. 1lb alum 3 gallons of alum mixture.

Let the paper dry overnight or speed drying with a blow dryer. To make enough alum for several dozen sheets of paper stir 1 tbsp 15 ml alum into 1 cups 360 ml warm water until completely dissolved at least two minutes.