Playing with Brushos, Day 2

Okay, back after the coffee break, lol. This post will also be picture heavy, I warn you now.
Yesterday, ( Previous Post) I used the Brushos on Smooth watercolour paper, and some Canvas sheet. Now I wanted to see the results using ordinary cardstock, bearing in mind the water involved. I used some Neenah cardstock, some Stamping card from Hunkydory, some generic white card, and some coated cardstock. However, first thing out today was some disposable gloves!

These are both done on Neenah cardstock, on the left, crystals first, then spritzed. On the right, water first, then sprinkled in the crystals. Both were taped down with Artists low tack tape to stop them curling.

 This is Hunkydory Stamping card,on the left, and so far, all the cardstock seems to be coping well with the water.
On the right is the coated cardstock. Not affected by the water, but you don't get the same sort of colour intensity you get with uncoated.
 



Another thing you can do with the Brushos is the same technique you use with Distress Inkpads- swiping some onto a craft mat and spritzing. In this case, you sprinkle on some crystals, and spritz.
Here I've sprinkled them onto my Inking mat.

 Spritzed with water....

...added some more orange and spritzed again.



Took some blank tags- just standard generic white card-

- and swiped the tags through it.

Here I've sprinkled some red crystals on top. You can see how they start to wick and spread in the water.

Blues and purples on this one.....








...Then throw a little red on top again, and spritz a bit more.
























Now another piece of coated cardstock to mop up the colours on the sheet. You get this strange 'resist' pattern appear.

 Now I thought I'd try the clingfilm trick. Sprayed a sheet of generic card with yellows, greens and browns. Gave it a good spritzing.



Scrumpled up some cling film, that opened it out.

Remember to tear your cling film much bigger than your cardstock, so you can crumple it up again on top.

Lay your cling film on top, and add as many creases to it as you can with your fingers. Put it aside to dry.

Not a total success- you can see some markings from the creases, but I think I didn't have enough water on there.Possibly the card soaked up too much. Maybe I should have spritzed the cling film too? Something to try next time.

Final thing I wanted to try-there seems to be a divide on the subject of heat setting. Some say don't it fades the colours, others say it's fine. So, to test it out, I sprinkled two pieces of Neenah card with approximately the same amount of colour, and gave them a spritz. The top one I put aside to air dry, the bottom one I heat set with my heat gun.

And here they are, both dry, side by side. The one on the left is the one I air dried, and the one on the right got the heat gun. To be honest, looking at this, I'd say there is very little to call it either way.





Now a round up- here are a couple of shots of the tags.

And some of the cardstock sheets.

And a few things I discovered:
 1. They're messy- gloves are a good idea, as is an apron, or old clothes.
2. Next time, I'll cut the bottom off a black bin liner, slit it down the side, open it out and put that over my table!
3.It's a good idea to tape your cardstock down, whatever you use, to stop it curling.
4. I think you would get paler colours with less powders. They really are very strongly pigmented, although they do fade a tad when they dry.There is also a white in the box, so I'll be trying that with some of the colours later to see what it does.
5. You can use them like paints, and if you mix them in a palette, you can let them dry out, then revive later with a little water.
6. You need to remember your Colour Theory, in order to not make mud, lol.

7. If you add powder first, then spritz, it will affect where the colour goes- the spritzing pushes it around.
8. If you have pools of wet colour you want to remove, do it with the corner of a paper towel. If you try blotting it with a whole sheet, you'll lift off a lot of the colour.Equally, you can take the colour down a number of notches this way

....