Crafty Birthday Gifts including Brusho

It was my birthday on Wednesday and rather than my husband get me things I didn't want, I steered him in the direction of my Amazon wishlist.  I like the idea of this because by using a simple browser add-on I can add items to my list  from all over the web, not just Amazon.  Most of  the gazillion items I have on my list are craft items and art technique books which is quite a minefield when you don't know the difference between a hot glue and an ATG gun. 

This was one of the great items I had seen on my internet travels and really fancied the look of:

Colourcraft Brusho paints and DVD

Thanks go to my husband for the paints and my sister, who bought the DVD from off my wishlist.  It's a great DVD, presented by Joanne Boon Thomas showing lots of great techniques you can do with Brusho.  You can see a preview of one of them on youtube here.  

 

Another item I had seen on a Donna Downey video was a 'Fresh Water Rinse Well.' This isn't one of life's essentials, but when your craft room is up in the attic and the route to your water supply is down some rickety stairs, it sure makes life easier!  Besides, what are birthdays for, if you can't have the odd frivolous luxury item?  What it does is clear away your old painting water and replace it with clean:

 

 Brilliant!.. and the gurgling sound you get with the fresh water is an additional bonus. 

 

I spent my birthday afternoon playing with these new 'toys' and I was absolutely in my element. The first thing I did was to make myself a colour swatch page of the 24 Brusho colours:

Brusho paints are highly pigmented powder paints that you add water to, like watercolours.  You only use a teeny tiny bit at a time so they will last for yonks.  I love vivid colours so was pleased to see they dry almost as bright as they are when they are wet. 

This, however, was the effect I saw that attracted me to them in the first place:

To do this you wet your page and then sprinkle on tiny specks of the paint.  The colours 'explode' onto the page and then blend into each other as you add more.  I'm thinking that they'll make great backgrounds for journal pages.

I also tried normal blending, using the colours like normal watercolour paints (my sons got me a paint pallette and brushes) and also did some flicking of the colours to make spots:

..which again will be useful for all kinds of backgrounds, cards, journal pages, etc.

All in all, I'm really pleased with these gifts and am itching to explore them more when I next get to do some more crafting.

Thanks for stopping by today and

have a great weekend,

Nicky {Creative Flourishes}