Experiment - Using Brusho to colour paper

I love colouring paper before using it as part of a paper cutting piece, either cutting shapes out to form a collage or as ‘infills’ on a paper cut. Mostly I use traditional watercolour paints to do this, scattering salt over the surface to get interesting patterns.

Before Christmas, I saw an artist I follow (Kate Bird’s Art and Crafts - www.facebook.com/katebirdsart) using Brusho to add splashes of colour to some handmade Christmas cards. I’d never heard of Brusho but it looked fun, and so I was chuffed when I managed to get a mixed boxful of little pots from the university art stores.


Brusho is basically little pots of crystals which explode into vibrant colours when mixed with water. ‘Be careful, it stains’, warned the uni technician. ‘I just stick my hands in bleach afterwards which gets it off’ he added. Err, I didn’t really fancy that, so point noted.

He was right! The little pots are hard to open without the odd minuscule speck escaping, which then bursts into a bright stream of colour when it hits the sink (which you should definitely open the pots over!). You really don’t want to get any on your lovely wooden table surface, so splash protection is definitely recommended.

In readiness, I stretched some paper (Bockingford watercolour paper) and waited for it to dry. If you’ve never stretched paper before, it looks a bit weird, but it flattens out when it dries, honestly! Stretching paper is a must if you’re planning on adding any more than a tiny bit of water to it, otherwise it’ll go all curly and will refuse to flatten out (don’t bother trying to iron it, it doesn’t work!).

The Brusho leaflet listed various techniques such as spraying water onto the paper then scattering the crystals on with a pepper shaker, mixing the crystals with water to make a watercolour shade to paint directly with, or printing using bubble wrap. You can also use Brusho to stain fabrics, wood or any porous material. Kate recommended YouTube for tips on how to use it, and I imagine it’s really versatile, but I decided to dive straight in by wetting parts of the paper and just dropping some crystals on it with a dry brush. 

Verdict - what fun! Some hues are made up of lots of different colours - ‘Emerald Green’ looked like rusty orange sand until dropped on the paper, then blues, greens and yellows spread across the wet paper in satisfying trails. I’ll definitely be using Brusho when I want some bright pops of colour and regular watercolour just isn’t bright enough. There's also lots of scope for future experimentation and I'll be checking out those YouTube tutorials.

 

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