Brayered Backgrounds

	Soft rubber brayer	White gloss or matt cardboard
	Dye inks - Black, Sienna & Chocolate Ancient Page and Berry Adriondak	Stamps to decorate (eg: Non Sequitur and Oxford Impressions)
	Gold paper, burgundy suede paper	Gold Krylon pen

	Roll brayer over berry ink pad to wet - roll in same direction all the time and make sure brayer is evenly wet.
	Roll over white gloss card - keep repeating this process until card has an even covering of ink. Always roll brayer onto card in the same direction - unless you are after a mottled effect.
	Leave inked card to dry overnight.
	Roughly sight up the centre of your card and stamp central stamp image in black Ancient page ink.
	Mask your image with scrap paper one side at a time and sponge brown dye inks onto the exposed card.
	When all 4 sides are sponged (creating a 'grid' to stamp in) then mask off main image and stamp in one grid square at a time. A more detailed explanation of this can be found under the "Grid Technique' tutorial.
	Leave for 2 days to dry completely before mounting - in this time ink will fade a little. Do not mount until ink is totally dry or you can end up with a very sad looking card - the inks do not always fade as you might expect - so better to be safe than sorry.
	In this case, edge with gold Krylon pen and then mount carefully onto suede paper and then gold card.

	A brayer is a cylindrical rubber device used to apply ink over a wide area of paper at once, it can also be used to apply ink to stamps (I prefer the softer rubber brayers as I get a better effect with these). A brayer is necessary for inking Magenta type stamps (detailed) and for even graded backgrounds.
	I usually use a brayer to create multi-colour graded backgrounds on both matte and gloss card. I've been told not to use it on matte card, but it looks good so why not? Matte and gloss card becomes coloured evenly and in very yummy colours when you do this. Keep in mind gloss card takes longer to dry and the colours can sometimes fade a little - depending on the ink..
	You can always scrunch up a piece of stained, splattered or otherwise ruined paper and roll over with a brayer inked up with a metallic or darker colour to give a really rich and luxurious looking paper. This sells for a mint, but if you're careful you can make your own.