brusho halloween

Watching Lesley on the Craft Channel last week I saw her demo a different way of using brusho powders, much more controllable but still with all the varied colours - naturally I had to try it out!
Having found a set of Halloween stamps - needless to say not the one I was looking for! - I decided that it would be ideal to try on the skies.
Tags were a nice size, not so much space in which to go wrong but still big enough. The  base tag was cut from white card, and the top from a pale kraft card.
I stamped the images from the nevermore set in black versafine, then added a moon mask. Black brusho powder was sprinkled sparingly over the images. The brusho powder is then activated using a brush and water, sort of splodging a little water on one small area at a time, keep wiping the brush clean as you go before moving to the next bit. You can see where i didn't quite get a smooth transition of colour, but it looked like clouds anyway.
Once dry, I removed the moon mask and coloured the tree, tombstones,  fence and grass with marker pens. I stamped the window from gothic fragments at the top of the second tag and cut out the window shape. More black powder on this piece, more heavily this time, and the same water and brush technique. Once dry, this second part tag was glued over the first one.

same basic technique for the second tag, apart from both tags being cut from the kraft card.
Images this time were stamped with versamark and embossed with lava black EP before adding the moon mask and the black brusho. The top tag was stamped with the same window stamp, but this time at the bottom of the tag using brown ink, and only the actual window cut out. I added some more stones using a marker pen, then used yellow ochre brusho powder to add colour to the stonework.

textured steampunk

 Apologies to anyone who is getting fed-up with my current steampunk craze, you will be pleased to hear that I am running out of ideas!

For the first of my DT  posts this month I have a card and a couple of Lesley-style notebooks to show you.

Our theme this month is textures, and my card is a very simple one using embossing folders and soft form relief paste together with the  owl from steampunk birds.
I embossed the two Tim Holtz folders on white card, cutting down to 6.5cm wide and and then into 2 slightly different lengths.
The background was a piece of textured matt silver card sprayed with walnut stain ink.
I used silver soft form relief paste on the owl, then carefully trimmed the spare round the edges.

 If you saw Lesley's recent shows on the Craft Channel, you will have seen her make some lovely notebook
 covers using brushos and tissue paper. If you missed them, try the catch-up on the website, though I think it only goes back for 7 days...... I am always happy to play with brushos, and crumpling tissue paper is dead easy, so I just had to have a go.
In hindsight, I should have gesso-ed the covers first, as some of the print on the covers shows through, but I was very happy with how they turned out.
The first one used blue and green brushos, and the window from gothic fragments covered with black soft form relief paste . I added some decoart antiquing cream in patina green over the window, then some gold wax to highlight the masonry.




For my second try I used leaf green, turquoise and purple brushos, and the cockerel from steampunk birds with the silver soft form relief paste.
I will definitely be making more of these notebooks, they are great fun to do and will make nice small gifts.