Making marbled hearts with shaving cream and food colouring:
I first started seeing posts about marbleizing with shaving cream and food colouring last summer, and thought it would be a neat technique to use for making marbled hearts for Valentine’s. 
This process is SO COOL. It’s right up there with painting with credit cards, which is also one of my new favourite ways to paint.
It’s really simple, you’re just going to have to gather a few materials and set up before you get started.
ignore the toilet rolls – I thought we’d incorporate them somehow, but we didn’t need to
What you’ll need:
- baking sheet
- shaving cream
- some stir sticks of some kind
- several colours of food colouring
- paper (we used thin white cardboard, but regular paper is fine
- piece stiff cardboard for scraping.
What to do:
Squirt a generous helping of shaving cream onto your baking sheet and spread it around to fill the sheet (I used my piece of stiff cardboard for spreading).
Drop several drops of each colour of food colouring onto the shaving cream.
Have the kiddos stir and swirl the colours around. This is soooo neat. I was reminded of those huge lollipops that you get a the fair or the circus.
Once you’ve swirled your colours thoroughly, lay your paper (we used thin cardboard) on top of the shaving cream, and gently press it in.
the other side of this cardboard is plain white
Lift it off and let it sit for a minute.
Then take your small piece of cardboard and scrape any excess shaving cream off to reveal your gorgeous marbleized paper!
I was seriously impressed. This is one of those things that you’ve seen all over the web, but you don’t experience the wow factor until you actually do it yourself.
My pictures don’t even do justice to how beautiful the results are.
I wasn’t really sure where we were going with it, but while our creations dried, I came up with a plan.
I cut hearts of all different sizes out of the marbleized sheets, and then cut a long thin strip out of another piece of cardboard, and the Hooligans glued their hearts to the thin strip.
Now they’re ready to tack up on a wall or in a window.
Have you tried this technique? Do it!! It’s so cool! It’s a little messy, yes. But the kids had fun mucking around in the tray when we were finished, and asked if they could wash the farm animals in the shaving cream.
Then I filled a big container up with water for them to wash up in. That led to them wanting to play in the water, so I refilled it with clean water and added some blue food colouring,
and that’s how they passed the rest of this dreary winter morning.
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Wonderful! I have to try this with my little guy. Thanks for the inspiration!
We posted the same thing today! Great minds think ALike!
That looks like so much fun! I’ve only just found your blog but I can see I’m going to be inspired by so many wonderful ideas to try with my kids!
Shopping list: Shaving Cream. Food Colouring.
(Having said that my little boy just climbed the kitchen cupboard and found the yellow colouring… we were all very jaundiced for awhile…!)
These turned out great! I can’t wait to do this activity with the girls!
You’ll love it, Crystal!
Love this and thanks for sharing it on The Sunday Showcase- I have never used shaving cream before!
My twins love mess so we shall have to try this one out although will need a little mummy help for toddlers!
Your hearts look great! I really do love the messy activities such as this..such creativity unleashed!!
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What do you suppose this would be like with a class of 16 third graders?
I’m going to try it! What a fabulous idea!
Go for it, Lynn!
I know I’m a year late but I just came across your post while browsing Pinterest. We just did this the other day, and it went exactly like it did for you: A craft activity that turned into a sensory activity and then a bath activity, as I placed supplies and child in the bathtub to clean up
So much fun plus pretty hearts out of a pretty simple idea, I love it!
How neat that we ended up doing pretty much the same thing! Great minds think alike.
I do this with my preschoolers to make bookmarks. Some great changes that helped…we lined the cookie tray with foil or some other lining so it was easy to clean. and we used window squeegies to scrape the shaving cream off. I love this craft. Oh, and liquid watercolors make it even brighter colors!
Great tips, Nicole! I keep hearing about these liquid watercolours! I have to get some. I’ve heard they make playdough much more vibrant that food colouring does.
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