Brayered card

It’s still a bit gloomy but it was bright enough for a photo so, as promised, here is the first of the projects from this weekend’s brayering class. We made three cards, using different brayering techniques.

For this card, I had the brainwave of providing black and white layers, so that each person could make the card in colours of their choice. We started by changing the colour of the ribbon, which started out as Basic Black with Very Vanilla stripes (or Very Vanilla with Basic Black stripes, depending on which way you look at it). We placed a small piece (you know me, when it’s one of the more expensive ribbons, it’s only ever a small piece!)  directly onto the ink pad and brayered it to squish it into the ink. If necessary you can turn over the ribbon and do it again on the other side. This is a brilliant way to colour your ribbon, especially if you don’t have the correct colour marker. However, it does take absolutely AGES to dry. We did this right at the beginning of the class and put the ribbon on one side to dry, for assembling at the end. But the ribbon pieces still weren’t dry, even when we had a go at them with the heat gun.  In fact, my sample card has ink stains on the crease, where the ribbon has bled onto it.

Onto the brayering... we were brayering onto glossy cardstock, which gives fantastic results. What’s more, the glossy cardstock is on special offer at the moment, in the March Frenzy promotion. That was a happy accident for me, as I’d planned to use it long before we received details of the offer.

We each chose two inks, mostly from the Subtles range, as here. Some people picked brighter colours and they looked absolutely fabulous. One of my favourite combos was Judie’s Wild Wasabi and Rose Red.  Here I’ve used Daffodil Delight and Baja Breeze.

We stamped onto the brayered backgrounds using Black StazOn® ink, which is ideal for non-porous surfaces such as glossy cardstock and gives a really crisp, dark image. This second picture here shows what it looks like stamped in Basic Black ink.  This ink is perfect for Whisper White cardstock, but not so great on glossy, as you can see. You can also see where I had a go at some white highlights with a gel pen, but it didn’t quite work out. I make mistakes so you don't have to! 

And you can’t see it but the card base is Shimmery cardstock, which is absolutely gorgeous. It’s shimmery on both sides and really sparkles in the light. It makes really nice card bases as it’s heavier than our Whisper White... and it, too is part of the March Frenzy promotion.

Stamps: Just Believe

Cardstock: Shimmery White, Glossy White, Whisper White, Basic Black

Ink: Jet Black StazOn®, Basic Black, Daffodil Delight, Baja Breeze

Accessories: Brayer, wide striped ribbon – Basic Black, Neutrals buttons, linen thread, Word Window Punch, Modern Label Punch

All products by Stampin’ Up!®