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!