I've seen a few people creating with Brushos on PVA glue so I was intrigued to try it for myself. The pieces I've seen have been larger abstract pieces but, as this was my first attempt, I stayed small scale and tried a few different colour combinations to see what was produced and tested a few techniques to see what benefits the glue might bring.
I taped down some watercolour paper and spread a thin layer of adhesive over each piece and then sprinkled over the Brusho crystals. You can see below the trios of colour I used on each piece:
Purple, Lemon & Grey / Lime Green, Gamboge & Olive Green / Alizarin Crimson, Violet & Ost Blue. They start reacting with the moisture of the glue straight away ...
... but still need some water sprayed over to help them mix and move. I sprayed and added more crystals, sprayed again until I was happy to leave everything to dry.
Forever impatient, I couldn't resist experimenting a bit more before the adhesive was quite dry: I pushed a stamp in to the panel on the right while it was still tacky and loved the effect! This panel already had a slightly frosty look and the faint trace of the snowflakes on the adhesive gave this a real depth. But be careful if you try this: Wipe off the adhesive between stamping and wash the stamp well immediately after use!
Once all the panels were completely dry I lifted the tape and trimmed them to size with neat edges. They had a nice glossy sheen from the adhesive. Given that the colour would usually remain water reactive, I tested how water resistant they had become by being trapped in the adhesive: There was hardly any colour transfer even after being sprayed with more water and rubbed with a paper towel.
I stamped more snowflakes on to the right panel using white paint. If the adhesive had not been used, I would expect the paint to alter in colour as the moisture reactivates the colour crystals. With the colour trapped in the adhesive, the paint stayed white.
Not wanting to cover the brusho background, I finished this card off with a stamped sentiment on a banner and matted it on to a card:
The following piece was turned upside down to the way it was created so that I could stamp in to the palest area. Although I would have preferred a smaller text, I think this is my favourite of the three: I love this colour combination and the background it created! Stamping on the adhesive requires a permanent, water resistant ink, and this took longer to dry than usual, but the coverage was very good. Even so, I was careful to use a stamping platform so that I could repeatedly stamp and be sure to get a good impression.
Finally, I used a variety of stamps and then black paint through a stencil on the last panel before matting it on to a painted gelli print paper.
What do you think? I'm really happy with the way these turned out and I hope that sharing the findings of my experiments will inspire you to try your Brusho crystals on PVA glue. Do leave a comment or link to your work if you try it or have any questions. I'm planning to try a larger abstract canvas piece very soon.
Happy crafting!Karen.
Colourcraft PVA adhesive can be found here: PVA adhesive.
Other products used as below:
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