tv sample

This was shown on the recent mixed media show with Chocolate Baroque for the Crtaft Channel - keep an eye out for repeats, some very tempting stuff on there......really loved the paints, but am trying to resist spending at the moment....

This was a small canvas from a well-known poundstore, which was claimed to be ready primed - but if it was, they hadn't used much primer! Still, I took them at their word, and tried brushos as a background colour. It sank into the canvas with great speed, but after several layers I did eventually get a colour I was satisfied with.
I added some grunge paste through a stencil, then more brusho, and stamped an image from gothic fragments in archival black, which faded to a lovely pale grey on the canvas.
The small images from the mini curiosities set  (only as a multibuy on the CB site, can be bought individually via The Craft Channel though) were stamped onto stampboard using versafine black, edges coloured with distress inks.

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.

brusho heart

This flowering baroque heart is the new clear stamp from Chocolate Baroque, and is the latest in a series of heart stamps - all on special offer at the moment!
I had a leftover piece of watercolour card already brusho'ed (if that is a word), so I stamped the image with black versafine and clear embossed it.
The large flowers were bleached out, and I was pleased that all the colour did come out. I added some extra colour to the leaves and the smaller flowers using spectrum noir pencils and a promarker blender pen. The stamens were highlighted with a gold pen.
The base white card blank is a 6"x6", and the dark purple mat matches one of the brusho shades in the bakground piece.



Lesley Wharton has a show on The Craft Channel today at 11.00am, called 'Brusho art with Chocolate Baroque' - should be a fabulous show! The Craft Channel is on Sky 679, or you can watch on your computer, there is supposed to be a catch-up facility if you miss the show........

decadent brocade

 Sorting out my craft stash is a slow work in progress, not helped by stopping to try out the finds that I had forgotten I had!
I have been sorting out my Chocolate Baroque stamps, and trying to rehome all the orphan ones back to their sets - in the process, I have been sorting them onto the tabbed stamp file sheets and then into plastic folders - they now take up less room than in the plastic file boxes they were in before, and hopefully I will be more likely to replace stamps on the sheets than into a box!
One of the sets I 'found' was the decadent brocade, which has been around for some years now, and I just had to stop and play.
I used this panel from the set, and experimented with some marker pens I also unearthed, but that was after the brushos! The brushos were already out. so I stamped the panel onto watercolour card with versamark and embossed with white before shaking purple, turquoise and cobalt brushos over the paper. Once it was dry, I trimmed it to 3.25" x 5.5" and mounted it onto a 6"x6" white card blank.
                                                  While waiting for the brushos to dry, I tried colouring straight onto the stamp with various  marker pens, and then huffing on the stamp to reactivate the ink.
The first sample used very old whispers pens and two new distress pens, and they both bubbled on the rubber - the blue distress pen was more successful than the green whispers, ok if you like the very distressed look!




Second try used stampin up markers, which were a lot better, although thegreens still bubbled a bit, and I didn't get very even coverage on the flowers, more likely my fault than the pens!

I cheated a bit with the third try, as I didn't bother cleaning the stamp first - to be honest, I didn't expect anything remotely useful this time!
 I had a collection of mini ink pads, mostly stampin up, and all elderly, and I tried inking using two of these.The purple still shows through on the flowers, where I was trying to avoid adding blue to the leaves.
Good news is the ink pads still work, and I have 4 notecards that will come in handy some time (also a few more stamp sets sorted)