How to Use Ink and Paint With Your Brayer

I don’t know about you, but I owned a brayer for awhile before I knew how to use it. Once I started using it I loved the effects I could get with it. Maybe you will too!

Using the Brayer to Paint or Ink Up your Card Stock

A brayer is like a mini paint roller where the roller part is made of rubber. You can use it to cover large areas of paper, just like you would use a paint roller to cover large areas of wall. Just cover the roller in one colour ink and roll it across your card stock in one continuous motion, then move it back and forth over the paper to lay down as much colour as you want.

You can add more than one colour of ink to your brayer at once, of course, and roll it onto your paper for a multi-coloured effect.

Inking Large Stamps

Sometimes it is very difficult to ink up a large stamp by the normal means of tapping ink onto it or tapping the stamp onto an ink pad. Brayers can make all the difference to your paper craft projects!

Here’s what to do:

• Lay the stamp on its back over some scrap paper
• Ink up your roller with the colour of your choice
• Roll the ink in one direction over the stamp’s image, then roll it the over the image from another direction until the entire image is inked up
• Keeping your stamp on its back, lay your cardstock or paper on the stamp and lightly smooth your hand over the image area
• Lift the paper directly off the stamp without twisting or moving it sideways to ensure a crisp, clean result

Depending on what kind of ink or paint you are using, you may get several impressions from your stamp before having to ink it up again or load it with more paint.

Using paint

• Load your roller with paint
• Laying your stamp on its back on scrap paper, roll the paint onto the stamp’s image
• Reload your roller with another colour of paint
• Roll this over the stamp, being careful not to mix the paint together more than you would like
• You can also drop some paint onto the stamp to highlight selected areas – experiment with re-inkers or alcohol inks to see what effects you get from them by dropping them onto the stamp
• Use the stamp as described above, laying your cardstock onto the stamp and smoothing the paper over the image
• You can also try spritzing the paint or ink with water before taking the next impression, to extend the life of your paint or ink

You will definitely get several impressions from the stamp when you use paint and a brayer, and each image will be slightly different from the last. It is such a good way to create a series of backgrounds for your cards, for example, or to make many embellishments for a scrap book at once.

If you would like more ideas for using a brayer and pictures showing you how this page on PaperCraftCentral.com is where you will find it: