Messy play with shaving cream

Now to some of my crafty friends that title will mean something and they will have an idea about what this post is about. However if you were like me a few weeks ago you would never have known what fun you can have with a can of shaving foam and some food colouring.

I admit that I watch very little TV. I would always rather craft than sit watching something on the television in the living room. In fact we tend to record films etc and then watch them at our convenience, often on a Friday or Saturday night if we are at home. However we do have a small TV in the kitchen which I often switch on to catch the news whilst I am cooking the evening meal. A few weeks ago I happened to look up a craft site called Create and Craft as I had read that there is a lady called Sue who demonstrates on there using Spellbinders Dies. As you will remember I am a recent owner of a Sizzix Big Shot die cutter and I just love playing with my dies. I thought I would see what she made. On that  particular programme she mentioned a technique of  colouring  card using shaving foam. I was intrigued and she said she would demo that too. Well...I was really amazed at the results and over the Easter break, as I could not get out into my garden, I decided to have a "Messy Play" session in doors and try the technique myself. My dear Hb was replying to some of his work emails at the time and he looked at me sideways when I started getting my "ingredients" together. I think he wondered what on earth I was doing with his shaving foam in the kitchen.

If you have never tried this is it such great fun for kids (including me) of all ages ;0)

You will need;

• A shallow flat bottomed dish big enough to lie a piece of card on.
• Shaving foam not shaving gel, do get one with a nice smell. Mine was just ordinary Gillette which my Hb shaves with each morning.
• A spatula for smoothing.
• An old ruler
• White card, not too thin.
• A skewer/stick
• Food colouring

On TV they used  Distress Inks for the colouring  but as I don't own any I decided to see what happened if I used the food colouring I use to dye my cake icing. I only have paste colours so I added a little water and made some into droppable colours.

Shake the can of foam and squirt it into the dish. Start smoothing it out to about 1" depth. I used a silicone cake spatula for this. You need to make the foam area big enough for your sheet of card to lie on.

Add drops of food colouring in a randomly over the surface. I experimented using 2 and 3 colours. Both results come out really well.

Use the skewer to swirl through the colours..

Next lay the piece of card on top. It is very important to pat the card down on top of the foam so that it really is in full contact with the colours.
Then carefully peel the card off.







Don't panic when you peel the card off and it looks like this....I really thought there was no way I could have any kind of pattern left. It just looked like a total foamy mess.

Place the card upright onto some newspaper.

Grab the ruler and carefully scrape off the foam, starting at one side and moving over to the other.
Just look what appears underneath...magic isn't it.

Even my Hb was so incredulous that he came over to watch. I tried several colourways.  You can reuse the foam several times before it becomes too muddy. Just smooth it out between goes with the spatula and add some new colours.

I rather liked this pattern with just the green and the blue. It looked very spring like to me.


Leave the paper to dry for a few hours and then flatten over night. The end results are your own sweet smelling marbled papers to craft with. (The smell does fade with time)

Here are a few more of my patterns.

After they had dried I decided I would also see how they behaved with heat embossing.

I used a large heart stamp and Versamark ink. I then used Black Detail embossing power to emboss with. I was really pleased with my final backing cards.

The ideas are just limitless...

Today's card challenge card is a very simple card I made with the above piece of hand made card with the heart embossing. I love the spring feel to it. I decided that it looked great by itself  and I did not want to use a coloured focal image. I just used my "Happy Birthday" rubber stamp sentiment  which I then heat embossed with the same black embossing powder. I cut a floral oval to mount the sentiment on and used some lovely spring green card to matt with.

It's a very "unlike me" card but I rather like it for it's simplicity and it will be great for a male birthday card as those are ones I always struggle with making.

Here is a close up of my fabby hand made backing card and yes it smells really good too.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Visible Image Get stamping
Papertake Weekly Anything Goes
Stampacular Sunday Spring Fever #209
Pretty Little Ribbon Spring #21
My Mum's Craft Shop Easter or Easter colours
Allsorts Challenge Spring has sprung #201
2 Sisters anything goes #138

I really hope that you might one day have a try with this. I understand that it is a really old technique. Although shaving foam was not used years ago, people made wonderful marbled papers for book covers.

Enjoy some messy play...I certainly did.

Remember that I have a giveaway here on my blog which runs until 14 April, all the details are here. There is also a link in my side bar.
You could win one of these necklaces and the runner up wins a gab charm. Everyone is welcome, do pop over and leave a comment there.

The sun has finally made an appearance here today.There are clear blue skies, the bitter cold wind has dropped and my washing is drying on the line out in the garden. I am just about to go and wake up my dear garden studio...woop woop. Spring seems to be nearly here at last. I shall have a hoover and a dust and get ready to be able to finally craft outside again really soon.

Enjoy your weekend and sending you all some sunshine,

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x