Hello stampers. You already know that I love this amazing new product in our Occasions catalog called Brusho. Well, it gets better. I have a very talented team member who just happens to be a watercolour artist as well, and she came and taught our team a few tricks with Brusho. I decided to focus on just a few of them that would translate very well into card making. One of my biggest aha moments was in realizing that you could get dramatically different results by changing the direction of the water spray. I was just spraying from the top down onto my paper. It also makes a difference as to which water spritzer you use. Fine mist will give a different end result than larger droplets of water from a bigger spritzer. Little details that had not even crossed my mind. I had also not thought of running watercolour paper through an embossing folder. Take a look at some of the cards that I came up with and then  I will show you how I did this in a video.

With this celebrate card you can really see what happens when you control the direction of the spray. I first put a piece of painters tape across the card about two thirds of the way up. Then I sprinkled a little brilliant red Brusho on an acrylic block and a little Prussian Blue Brusho on another block. I picked up the dry brusho with a dry brush and dabbed it in dots across the watercolour paper along the edge of the tape in alternating colours. Then I misted water on it using an old Stampin’ Mist bottle. I didn’t spray from above, but rather sprayed in an angle away from me. I will show you in the video. Here is a close-up.

I really, really love the look of this. I chose elegant eggplant cardstock to cut out the word “celebrate” which is one of the framelits that you can get for  free with a $120 purchase during sale-a-bration. I decided to use this same technique with different colours and then I made an extra piece with the same colours as the background that I could use for my focal point. I was pretty pleased with myself for thinking of that! In the meantime, my to-do list for getting ready for my ski trip was being ignored!!

For this card I used Prussian Blue and Yellow Brusho and I dusted off Dragonfly Dreams with a bit of guilt in my heart for having neglected this beautiful stamp set. I used the watercolour paper on the left to cut out my dragonfly thinlet.

Our mini dimensionals are perfect for popping up these dragonflies and the Stamparatus was great for stamping the sentiment with archival black. I don’t know if you have noticed but it is hard to stamp on watercolour paper. It is a bit rough and very textured and thick, so the stamparatus let me stamp this three times in a row to get a nice dark colour. The sentiment is from So Many Shells which is another great set to have in your stash. I haven’t tried it yet, but I think you could put Wink of Stella on the dragonflies to take it up another notch.

Here you can see the beautiful detail in this technique and you can see the direction the water went. I haven’t felt this artistic in a long time and oh my, it is addictive! Be still my heart. This next card uses a different technique all together.

For this card I used a 1″ wide flat brush to wet the watercolour paper generously. Then I sprinkled on Brusho in “stripes” and then simply went over the powder with my wide brush in long, even strokes. After it was dry I stamped the large tree in archival black and then I embossed the smaller trees in black. This left the large tree looking rather muted, so I stamped over it in versamark and then embossed it too. The sentiment is from Butterfly Basics and I embossed it in silver. Here is a close-up:

The last card that I made was a first for me. I ran the watercolour paper through the Big Shot with the Woodland embossing folder. Then I spritzed it with water finely from a distance so that there would be a fine mist on my paper. Then I sprinkled on yellow and brilliant red Brusho. I made up brown by first making some green Brusho. You do this by combining yellow and blue. When doing this always add a little of the darker colour to the lighter colour, this is much more efficient. After you have green you will combine it with red to make brown.

You need to let your background dry, or speed it along by using the heat gun. Then you can take a small brush and paint the trees brown. This is not very difficult since the trees are raised. The sentiment is from Heartfelt Blooms, one of our fabulous saleabration sets that you can get for free with a $60 purchase.

I hope you have enjoyed learning a little more about Brusho. Once again, I want to sincerely thank Char McGill who taught me these tips. If you want to see her work, please check out her blog. I am in awe of her talent, but it is her personality and sweet nature and sense of humour that have captured my heart.

I will finish this blog post by sharing a video that will show you some of these techniques. Seeing is believing!!