What is a Brayer?

A brayer is a roller with a handle. Traditionally speaking, brayers are used in print making for inking printing blocks. So how does that translate to scrapbooking? Lots of ways! If you are using a rubber stamp larger than your ink pad, you can use the brayer to evenly distribute the ink by rolling the brayer on the ink pad and then roll the brayer over your stamp. This is especially useful when your rubber stamp contains fine details, and as you probably already know, pressing a finely detailed rubber stamp onto an ink pad usually results in "muddy" stamped images. Since the inked brayer is rolled gently on the stamp, the ink does not settle into the grooves, giving you a more "crisp" stamped image. Also, you can roll the ink directly onto paper. This is actually quite fun with a rainbow stamp pad as you can imagine all the fun effects you can achieve! (Just make sure to roll the brayer horizontally across the ink pad so as not to cross-contaminate the colors.) We suggest practicing this first on scrap paper before using it on a scrapbook project. My favorite use for a brayer is when gluing large surface area paper. We have all experienced paper wrinkling when using wet glue in large areas. To help achieve a smoother look, sparingly glue the two pieces of paper together and then roll the brayer over the paper with light even pressure. For those of use that create altered books, this helps to keep the bulk of glued pages down. Note: PLEASE exercise caution if you use a previously inked brayer to smooth papers. We wouldn't want you to accidentally transfer unwanted ink onto your project! As you can see, a brayer is a very useful tool!