Marbled Homemade Christmas Card

Over the summer, our preschool campers made marbled cards for their parents. We had such a blast with it, so I wanted to recreate it for the holidays! This way, every one of my students can bring a homemade Christmas card to their families in December.

marbled art homemade Christmas card

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Materials
Shaving cream
Shallow pan or tray
Toothpick or plastic knife
Card stock, construction paper, or white cards
Paints – we used the following:

Glittery liquid watercolors provided by Discount School Supplies
Tempera paint
Acrylic paint

Directions
Spray shaving cream onto a shallow tray, then spread it into a mostly-even layer. It doesn’t have to be very tall – just enough that none of the tray below is peaking through.

Add little drops of paint sporadically onto the top of the shaving cream. I just let the kiddos do this straight from the paint bottles. If that doesn’t work with your children, they could use eye droppers for the watercolors or paint brushes for the other paints.

Use a toothpick or plastic knife to marble the paints together. When I showed the preschool children how to do this, I likened it to connecting the dots and slicing into the shaving cream. Be sure not to roughly the mix the shaving cream and paint together, as that doesn’t yield a marbled effect.

Take the paper (we used white cards) and place it face down on top of the shaving cream and paint. Gently press the card into the shaving cream, rubbing along the entire piece of paper. This is how the paint is transferred to the paper, thus creating a print.

Gently remove the paper/card and place on another tray, face up. Using a sturdy piece of cardboard or a ruler, press down and wipe the entire length of the card. This removes the shaving cream, but leaves the paint behind. Let everything dry!

Once the paper is dry, fold it in half to create a card. Depending on the thickness of the paper, there may be some curling along the edges. We fixed that by placing some heavy books on top of the cards for a while.

Then let the kids write their Christmas greetings inside the cards! If there is paint on the inside of the card, cut out a piece of white paper and let the children write on that. Then glue or tape the message inside the homemade Christmas card!

a word about paints

I let the preschoolers choose which paints they wanted to use. I had green and red tempera, acrylic, and glitter watercolors available. The acrylic paint yields the boldest colors, with the watercolors creating a pastel-like effect. The tempera paint seemed to come out in between. No matter the paint, the children loved how their marbled art cards came out!

Please keep in mind that acrylic paints aren’t really washable if they get on clothes (not all tempera paints are, either). I had the kids wear smocks while they painted, just to be sure!

Have you ever tried shaving cream marbling? Would your child like making a homemade Christmas card this way?