Just playing

Woo hoo, it's the school holidays! No work to prepare, nowhere I needed to go, nothing I needed to do for the time being, so I decided it was time for a play!

Recently on Pinterest I've been admiring various artworks (some of which I've pinned on my Bister and Brusho Art board) using something called Bister, or Bistre. Having never heard of it before, I had to investigate! It seems to be popular in The Netherlands, and there are some great examples using it on the Stampinback Blog. I really fancied having a go at something similar, but I don't have any Bister. Then I remembered that, quite some time ago, I bought some Brusho powder paints, although I didn't do much with them at the time. As far as I can tell, Brusho and Bister appear pretty much to be the same kind of product. I'm not quite sure whether to call the Brusho paints or inks, as they behave similarly to both.

Right, I thought, I'll have a go with the Brusho and see whether I can get similar results. The trouble was, I couldn't find them! I knew they must be somewhere in my craft room. So I spent a whole day and a half (yes really!) going through all my stuff with a fine tooth comb, so determined was I to find them. I even looked in cupboards in other rooms in the house, just in case for some strange reason they had migrated elsewhere. By last night they still hadn't turned up, but at least I now have a very tidy craft room!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I eventually realised there was one box I hadn't looked in, one I keep under my desk. It used to house a mixture of bits and pieces, a microcosm of my stash, if you like, that I could just pick up and take with me if I was going away anywhere. Since we moved up here there are very few occasions now when that would happen, so during my last reorganisation I had put all the bits and pieces away with their fellow bits and pieces and the box underwent a change of use. And, of course, that's where I finally found the Brusho!

It's brilliant stuff. So many different ways it can be used. I won't go into them all just now, but there's lots of info here. For my first card, I sprinkled some Brusho (sparingly - it's very concentrated) over watercolour paper and lightly sprayed it with water. The powder magically turned into paint and spread out over the paper.



I overstamped  it with stamps from Art Journey, Stampinback, Lindsay Mason and Hobby Art and filled in the gap at the side with a Memory Box diecut. I used a white gel pen to add highlights to the flowers.

For the second card my method was similar, except that I used plain smooth card instead of watercolour paper and coloured just part of the card with Brusho. The interesting thing here is that I only used black Brusho. When you mix it with water to use as a paint  it comes out black, but as a powder it's a composite of different colours which separate out when you spray it or drop it on to wet paper. The butterfly and grasses are by Inkylicious. I mixed a little turquoise Brusho with water to use as a paint to colour the butterfly.

The third card uses watercolour paper again, but this time I dampened the paper first before sprinkling the Brusho on to it. I stamped the flowers and butterflies (Lavinia Stamps) and painted the flowers as above. Sentiment is by Indigo Blu. Flower border punch by X-Cut.



The fun of the sprinkled backgrounds is seeing how they turn out. No two will be the same. I guess it may be possible with practice to control it a little more, but I'm not sure I'd want to. I like the randomness of it.

I've barely yet scratched the surface of what can be done with Brusho, and I'm sure I'll be doing some more experimenting, so thanks for looking, and watch this space!