312. Marbled Candle Stars

Today, two of my friends came by and we marbleised some candles. ('Some' here meaning 'rather a lot'.)

I put some star-shaped stickers on two of mine before dumping them into the coloured water:

The only two clear results.

 
Some of the stickers also looked quite interesting afterwards:

 

And - just because it looked so hilarious - this is how we dried the long, thin candles:

40. Suminagashi

Today, I spent some time looking for other people who are doing yearlong projects or daily challenges. Yes, they are out there, and they are more than just few. :)

One of them has introduced me to a new technique I had never seen nor heard about before: Suminagashi - the Japanese art of marbling. It basically consists of dipping paint brushes with ink into water to create patterns and then place a paper on top of it to absorbe the colour. I was so fascinated I had to try it myself. Here are the results:

Of course, I don't have the original ink that's used for this, so I had to make due with watercolours (regular blue and black ink didn't work at all). Red and yellow definitely worked best while blue was extremely difficult - no idea why.
But it was a lot of fun sitting in front of that large water bowl with my paint brushes. I shall try it again some time soon. :)