four seasons

 I recently acquired a heap of oblong beer mats, a size and shape that were completely new to me but ideal to stamp the tree from the Chocolate Baroque Spinney design-a-tree stamp set.

It took several coats of white gesso to hide the printing before I could decorate them, so it would probably have been easier - maybe not cheaper - to buy some greyboard or MDF shapes!

I used brusho powders as a background, they came out pastelly as the colour soaked into the gesso, but I added a little more after the first layer dried to intensify the colour in places.

The basic tree was stamped with black versafine ink, and then the mini  stamps from the set were used to create the foliage.

The foliage was stamped using a mixture of distress and pigment inks to hide most of the branches, varying the colours according to the season. Mostly greens, white and pink for spring; a mix of various greens for summer, and finally greens, oranges and reds for autumn. The winter tree was left bare.

I used some more of the green brusho to make a base for the trees, and used a black pen to extend the stamp to the edge of the shapes.

The finished trees were added to a 10"x8" canvas board, originally also coloured with blue and green brushos, then stencilled with grunge paste, more brusho added to deepen the colour, and finally some wax rubbed round the edges.

I hadn't tried anything on this scale before, and was quite pleased with the result.

I am linking this to the new challenge on
 Make my Monday, which is 'in the garden', though I may be stretching a point with a mini orchard!

Spinney tree

 Sample cards for the recent brusho show on the Craft Channel with the lovely Lesley Wharton - a rather surreal experience seeing your cards on tv!
Both made using the spinney design-a -tree stamp, with the quote from words of inspiration.
I used a sheet of A4 watercolour card, stamped the tree in black versafine ink and clear embossed it before sprinkling the brusho onto dry card - same for both cards, with the words stamped onto a cut-off piece.

The first one used leaf green and turquoise powders, with a tiny bit of orange. Most of the green was sprinkled over the tree to create the foliage, and the hope was that that I would get a landscape effect as the colour spread after spritzing with water. If you have enough imagination, there are sort of hills there!


For this one, I was trying to create autumn colours by adding red to the tree.
I cheated a bit by spreading the green round the tree with a clean paintbrush, and added a tiny bit more green powder at the base of the tree using the very tip of the paintbrush dipped into the powder.

The dried card was cut down to fit onto a 6"x6" square black card blank for both cards.