going with the flow and brushos or infusions?

Hello there! How are you? Its Rachel here today with a little inspiration hopefully! I started my piece today by comparing brushos and infusions - I have both and wanted to see how they worked under the same conditions. Throughout I used yellow brusho and compared it with golden sands infusions. Here are my results:

In this one I sprinkled both onto water colour card and spritzed with water. I think this one clearly shows the coarser nature of the infusions - and also the more multifaceted the colours are. The brushos seem more homogeneous in colour and finer in size and brighter too.

In this next one I sprinkled them onto a craft mat, spritzed with water then used as a wash. Again the infusions differed because of the mixture of colour and grainsize included. 

In this next one I layed down a stencil and sprinkled the crystals on top - then I spritzed with water. Both showed the stencil well but the infusions - because of the coarse nature - flowed less and seemed to define the stencil more clearly.

Finally I swapped the stencils around, cleaned then up, sprinkled through again but this time rubbed grungepaste through the stencil on top of the brushos/infusions ... here the colour of the infusions came through more strongly but in both cases the colour was streaky.

Having done this I decided to make a canvas following the tic tac toe theme from this month - I started using the infusions with the grunge paste. I chose two different colours this time.

I made a cardinal error here mixing blue and yellow and of course achieving murk!!! Still all was not lost and I decided to go with the flow. I wanted to use the line lace, corrugated board and flowers ... so next I added the lace and card.

Next came the flowers ...

Then I added gesso - just a light covering ...

And then used a couple of spray inks.... brushed corduroy and salty ocean...

Finally I added a picture from Indigo Blu ..

I touched up the picture with blue to match ...

So there you have it - I think brushos and infusions are very similar but do have significant differences and produce different effects according to the techniques used with them. The infusions are coarser and tend to produce a more distressed and vintage effect. The brushos are finer and brighter.

I hope you have enjoyed my experiments!

Big Hugs

Rachel xx