Quote challenge Journey & Friendship

Settle down for a long post or go down to the last image for the latest Craft Barn challenge.
I have chosen the word Friendship and managed to find stamps to represent the quote, all from Crafty Individuals. Just as well, as I wanted to play with some of the new CI stamps in my collection which I just won on their blog. I am so grateful for Jean and Malcom's generosity!

Another recent supply I wanted to play work with was the Brushos as they're just fun!

My first attempt turned out very dark as you can see in this page for the quote challenge Knowledge or Hurt, that I finally managed to catch up with:

I should have used "Knowledge is experience" as a quote because this page is all about experimenting and it shows! I started by a Brushos background with blue, violet and a bit of green all cool colours but... too much!
I tried bleach stamping and it worked to some extent but is quite subtle. If you look very closely, you'll spot a script stamp (ESN10 from Paper Artsy) and a Harlequin stamp (C349 from the Artistic Stamper). I also tried the splats from (Messy Art from the Artistic Stamper) but they can be seen a lot better when I stamped them with white paint.
The central stamping in white paint is of a much too detailed stamp from Impression Obsession (Rose impression background-F8867), which hides the best bits of the Harlequin bleaching! Never mind...
I penned my quote in ink and chalked it all up to experience! I am entering the page in the Pan Pastel UK challenge.

So first Brusho lesson: Don't use too much! The small spoon I reserve for embossing powder is definitely too big for the Brushos. You need a light touch with them and I came up with 2 methods that worked for me.
        1. A small brush. Dip the dry brush in the pot and tap the handle to sprinkle the powder on your pre-wetted paper.
        2. Transform each pot into a salt/pepper shaker of sorts. An internet search revealed that some Brushos aficionados pierce holes(s) into their pots to do this but I wasn't prepared to deal with any resulting incidents where a pot, or worse the whole box of pots, would hit the floor ! Brusho on carpet is no laughing matter...
Here's a pic of my impromptu shakers:

If you have pre-teens in the households pinch a few of their loom bands to secure cling film on top of the pots and pierce a few holes with a needle.

My second attempt with my new tools yielded the background below:

 With a lighter touch I obtained this one (the photo is NOT blurry, it's the brushos) :

Finally the last one is the one I chose for the quote page:

This one is made with a lot of black powder, which dissolves into brown and blues on contact with water, my favourite powder of the set because of this effect. I added a dash of purple and a small sprinkling of red.

For all these experiments I used watercolour paper since a lot of water is necessary to get the brushos moving and card isn't good for very wet work.

Enough of my experiments, onto the page itself:

I stamped the girlfriends (CI-284) first on a piece of vellum & masked them before stamping the music score (CI- 309).
I stamped the heart (CI- 342) directly on the page and added white highlights with gel pen.
To isolate the girls further from the colourful background I applied white and black pencils on the back of the stamped vellum.

If you are a lucky owner of Brushos please share your tips in the comments section!