more brusho play

I havent had a lot of time to play in the last week, the chaos that was the rewire is still in force and with no end in sight.  On the upside Ade has now cleared a lot of his junk out of the box room ready for Nates cot, and hopefully some of his art supplies.  Box room is next to my playroom so it's going to be even easier to pinch borrow his stuff ;o)

As I'm typing this I've got a couple of experiments drying (going to take several hours) but I'll let you in on one.. I'm trying the brushos with floor polish aka caught in crystal technique.  I did have an omg this is going to be way too dark moment but it seems as though a lot of the colour is going to disappear into the excess tissue (I shouldn't have used so much polish.. oops) I "think" this is going to be one where you add a very thin layer of polish and sprinkle the powder on top rather than mist the acetate with perfect pearls, add colour then polish.  Mind you I managed to get a really cool effect when I was pouring the polish over, don't think it's going to survive the drying but we'll see.

Anyway I did get chance to play around this week and thought I'd have a go at being a "proper Artiste" lol.  Started off with a dl sized strip of white stamping card and I roughly coloured in a tree trunk with white wax crayon.  Next I used a large wet paint brush and coloured in a sort of circle at the top of the trunk, sprinkled a couple of the greens over the central area before a very light mist and a wobble.  Once this had dried I coloured in the rest of the area including over the trunk with plenty of water and sprinkled over cobalt blue & turquoise, a more generous mist and more vigorous wobble to blend.  Once dry you could see where I hadnt coloured in the trunk properly (where there's some blue splodges) but in the main it was nearly all white where the wax had resisted the paint.  Would have looked daft if I'd left it so I very carefully used my nails to gently scratch down the trunk to remove most of the crayon before going over with my favourite water, sprinkle wobble using sandstone and dark brown. 

Quick stamp with some black versafine, lavina toadstools and seaweed (I didnt have my specs on lol) and (I think basic grey) fairy.  I took the pic while the tag was still damp and have since added glamour dust fairy trails.  Renoir I'm not lol, in fact I think I'd even be booted out of nursery school art classes but I did have some fun with this one and I think the wax crayons will make a reappearance soon, possibly in connection with some wax paper embossing folder resist...

This one is where I curse and bemoan how difficult it is to get a true pic when using micas.  In real life these look like fantasy marbles with veins of shimmer running through them.  You'll just have to take my word for it this time.

For those who know the clingfilm ripple technique this is attempting it using perfect pearl biscotti mist and brushos.

The first one uses a blue, purple and an edging of red, sprinkled over some sort of scrunched up and smoothed out cling film before the card is pressed into place, turned up the right way and left to dry naturally.. (no speeding up with the heat gun and no pulling off the plastic every five minutes to see if it's dry yet, leave it alone for a few hours.)  Most people lift the cling film, turn over and lay on the card.. if I did it that way I know I'd end up dropping it straight in my lap lol.

The 2nd one uses gamboge and a red with the same technique but instead of using cling film I went with a plastic carrier bag that had been scrunched up and kept in a pot with all the other gazillion bags waiting for Jane to smuggle over the border into Wales.  Probably not visible in the pics but using the clingfilm gave me much closer together veins of shimmer and because it's see through you can push and prod the cling film around to concentrate and highlight areas. 

Regular readers will know I love my biscotti mist, doesnt clog and it's a nice subtle effect and for this it's even more luscious.  Never noticed it when spraying over coloured backgrounds but with this technique & these colours it appears silvery with the purples & blues but golden with the yellows & oranges.


On a slightly different note, storage.. if you're going to puncture a hole in the top of these pots it's most important to keep them from falling over and wasting precious crystals.  I used my trusty scal to come up with dividers to fit in to a5 storage boxes for them.  I've not quite worked out how to add svg files here so have converted it to a black & white jpg for anyone that uses a digi diecutter.


I never did like cutting thin lines to score because it weakens the fold so use small white dots as a scoring guide, this is my easy way to see where I need a ruler and stylus and it's not noticeable on the finished project.  This was created at 90dpi and was drawn to exact size, you might want to do a right click save target or email me for the svg.  You will also need to cut into the corner along the fold lines.