Murphy's Law in the Marbling studio

 Last week, I attempted to do a whole lot of marbling.  I did actually do a bunch but everything that could go wrong, did.  Hence Murphy's Law.

I was using the palette from a NASA photo of the earth from space: blues, white for clouds, green for continents with a dash of orange for not green land.  And these colors worked well together but the first thing that went wrong was I tried using a white paint that I've never used before without testing it for spreading on the thickened water.  Lots of it fell to the bottom so the first thing on my list of things to fix is to check all the paints I'm planning on using for proper spreading on the medium.  The blues were mostly okay but the greens and the whites, not so much.

  Then the medium was a bit thick. I hadn't checked that either, using my tried and true formula for mixing it but apparently age of the powder and humidity do indeed affect the consistency.  This is not a fatal error since all it means is I have to rinse the fabric more thoroughly after marbling to get all the goo off, but again, something to fix.

I couldn't find my marbling notebook with all my notes of things I learned from experience so I had to rediscover some things.  Like the first color put on the medium is not as noticeable in the overall design as the last color.  In this example, the orange was last following the green.  Way more of those colors than I wanted altho I think it's still pretty fabric.

After that day of surprises, I switched to the shaving foam to try out some blue and white ideas.  I got the white swirls I was looking for but also learned I can't do a thinner layer of foam just because I'm running out.  It just won't allow the manipulations I want to do.

I like the bottom one better as it has more of the swirling look I was after.  The top one suffered from my not remembering the correct patting technique for making sure paint transfers completely.  

And to end off a frustrating week, I managed to mess up my back on Friday.  I spent the weekend resting, did lots of studio stuff on Monday but woke yesterday with yet more back pain.  So, it will be next week before I get back in the marbling studio.  I can only be thankful I have a massage appointment in a couple of days.