My daughter recently brought down a bag of ‘discards’ from her room that contained one of those old acrylic box frames. For whatever reason, the kismet angel that sits on my shoulder saw that this would make a great tray, a marble tray in fact, rimmed with gold. So that’s what I set out to do. It was a very easy and forgiving project and I love having this little tray on my desk to catch and contain those little binder and paper clips that end up everywhere. My favorite part? Hmmm…I’d have to say the process. It was really fun to see the transformation with a little paint, a little water, a feather and a sponge.

Materials

• An item to marbleize
• White paint to cover your item. I used Rustoleum 2X Spray Paint White
• Acrylic paint in white and black. I used Acrylic Paint 2 oz., Snow White by Americana and
• Acrylic Paint 2 oz., Lamp Black by Americana.
• Acrylic paint in gold for trim. I used DecoArt Dazzling Metallics Paint, 2 oz., Glorious Gold
• Feather
• Sponge, I did cut a little triangle out of to get in the tight spaces…It looked like a little pac-man.
• Spray bottle with water
• Paper towel
• Frogtape Delicate Masking Tape(10-Pack), Yellow, which worked perfectly! I was very hesitant to put tape on my recently painted/marbleized surface so I did a test run by spray painting a piece of plastic and then putting this tape on it. I was so very happy when I was able to remove the tape without pulling of any of the recently applied paint.

How to make it

Step 1: Paint your entire piece with white paint. Because it was plastic, I used a paint with a primer in it.
Mix 2-3 shades of gray, from light to dark using your white and black paints (love my Pottery Barn catalog palate?)

Step 2: Using your feather, draw some randoms lines in the different gray colors. Because my piece was so small, I opted to have my lines go in one general direction for the most part.

Step 3: After it sets for about a minute, but before it is fully dry, lightly spritz the area with your water bottle

Step 4: Then take your sponge and gently dab the veins…don’t blur all of them…just here and there.

Step 5: If you think you have too much gray and if it’s still wet then ‘pull’ it off with a sheet of damp paper towel. If it’s dry, then sponge on a little white paint where it’s needed. You can see towards the end of the video below where I ‘whitened’ up a few spots and it really improved the marble look.
Towards the end, hit up a few spot with your feather to give a little more definition where needed
I let it dry for a good day and then taped off the bottom inch of my Faux Marble Tray with the Frog Tape Delicate Masking Tape. Then I painted the top with DecoArt Metallic Paint in Glorious Gold. It took a couple of coats to thoroughly cover the marble underneath.
Once done, I sealed the entire tray with polyurethane spray.