How To Dip Paint Faux Marble

 I finally got the laundry from our beach trip washed, just in time to pack it up for our trip to the mountains. Our daughter has a mandatory two day orientation at her university and we also have to attend. Since we will be near our cabin we are just going to stay for Father's Day weekend. I'll have my stores open with delayed handling. Anything ordered after 9PM tonight will ship on June 19th (you can link to my shops from the Home page). I would just close entirely but I hate to do that when I was gone all last week. I found out next month I'll be away again for my daughter's girls' trip. She and her high school friends planned a beach getaway before they all head to college but since none of them are 21 they can't find a place that will rent to them. So, I have been reluctantly invited along. They're not thrilled and I wasn't planning have my stores closed again this summer but I'm not going to look a gift beach trip in the mouth! My daughter is covering my cost as payment for my services.

In between all the washing and packing I finally got the switch plates for the kitchen backsplash painted. I tried to do this before we left but the technique I wanted to use didn't work. When I was in junior high the art teacher taught us to marblelize paper with oil paint. She took a pan of water and dropped the oil paint on the surface. The paint floated and she swirled it around to make it look like marble. Then she pulled sheets of paper through the water and when they came out they looked like marble. When I tried to recreate this the oil paint didn't float. I tried thinning it with extra oil and all kinds of stuff and couldn't get it to work. 

I thought about it over vacation and decided to use the method in the video. I took acrylic decorative paint that's already thin and thinned it even more with water. I used a lot of water, so the mixture was equal parts water and paint. I mixed it with a bamboo skewer until it was smooth. Then I added the colors for my marbling. The main part of our kitchen backsplash is white marble brick. It's shimmery with gold and silver veins, so I used white paint with iridescent, silver, gold, and beige accents. When the paint looked like I wanted I dipped the switch plates in it and lifted them up. Then I cleared the screw holes and any bubbles with the bamboo skewer. Every so often I would tilt the plate to change the color mixture so each plate is unique like the marble tiles. The kitchen island backsplash has glass and Carrera marble mosaic tiles so for those switch plates I just used the white, iridescent, and silver paints and dipped them the same way.

I think these blend really well with the tile. When I was looking at kitchen photos for ideas I noticed hardly anyone puts outlets in the backsplash anymore. Instead they hide them under the cabinets. If they do have outlets in the backsplash they use fancy switch plates. We have four to five outlets in each wall, so I couldn't afford the fancy switch plates. I decided to just paint the existing plastic ones to match so you don't really notice them at all and I think these will work. Once they are dry I will spray them with Thompson's Water Seal to protect the finish. My step-dad just loves Water Seal and gifts it to me all the time so I have about a thousand cans of it!

You could use this technique to dip all kinds of things depending on the size of the pan you use to mix the paint. You could even dip a canvas or board in the paint to make unique wall art! Have you ever used a marble painting technique? How did you do it and what did you make? Please let me know in the comments!