Thursday, March 31, 2016

Disguising paper using a brayer

I know you have a brayer collecting dust in a corner of your craft room.  I just dusted mine off a few days ago to see what I can do to refresh less than loveable scrapbook paper.
Here are a few ideas:

1) Kissing:  No don't go smooching your brayer.  Brayer, with ink, over a large background stamp that has quite a lot of detail.  Next, roll the brayer onto a solid image stamp.  You have now transferred the image of the detailed stamp onto the surface of the solid stamp.  Take this sold stamp and press it onto your cardstock or decorative paper.
Actually, as an aside, you can put lip stick on your lips, kiss the paper and then sprinkle embossing powder over the kiss print.  Heat emboss.  You now have an embossed imprint of your kiss.  This is great for a sweetie Valentines card.  It works.  Honest!
2) Ghosting:  Stamp an image on your cardstock several times in clear embossing ink.  Do NOT emboss.  Next, brayer over your invisible images with a dye ink stamp pad.  Your images will magically appear on a velvety colourful background.
3) Drywall Tape Printing:  Wrap your brayer with drywall mesh tape at the hardware store or even the dollar store.  It looks exactly like Magic Mesh.  Remember Magic Mesh - I still have some in a drawer.  Since the drywall tape is sticky on one side, it will adhere to your brayer.  Next, roll your wrapped brayer into a white, gold or any other pigment stamp pad.  The stamp pad has to be pigment because it is like a paint.  It sits on top of your paper instead of soaking into it like dye ink.  Finally, roll it onto a decorative paper to create a weathered grid-like paper.
Drywall Tape Printing

4) Colouring cardstock:  Do you have a really nice coloured ink pad, but not have the paper to match it?  Roll your brayer in the ink pad and then roll it onto your white cardstock over and over.  You will achieve a piece of cardstock that matches your ink perfectly.  You may want to reserve this technique for small pieces of cardstock such as punched out flowers.  Otherwise, you will use up your ink and wear out your arm muscles.

Like I said, dust off your brayer and give these ideas a test drive.



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