With a Cuttlebug and a Brayer...

I finally had success with a techinique that I first read about several months ago on my friend Jan's Blog - Far North Designs. The technique was for inking Cuttlebug embossing folders before you pass them through your 'bug. My first attemps were horrible and on the odd occassions I have tried since I was still ending up with a mess. I had been applying ink to the embossing folder direct from my ink pad and things were getting just too inky. Anyhow this time I tried using my brayer to apply the ink - RESULT! I ended up playing for quite a while and created lots of lovely bits of inky embossed designs - this is the card I made with 2 of them.

Both of the embossed bits were inked using my brayer and a Kaleidacolor ink pad - Carribean Sea. The piece for the top half uses a piece of card I had already coloured with the brayer before embossing, once it had been put through the 'bug I ran the inky brayer over it again very lightly to strengthen the colours on the raised embossed areas without squishing the embossing flat again. The bottom section was simply I piece of white card which I had emobssed and then coloured with the brayer.

The rest of the card was so simple, I just chose some lovely vibrant turqoise card from my stash that toned with the colours from the ink pad. Added a little bit of ribbon and a pretty flower and brad. The tag was stamped and embossed with clear EP and then brayerd with more of the Kaleidacolour ink so it would tone in - the clear embossing provided a resist to the inks so the stamped words would show through in white.

I really like the effects I can get with this technique, you can ink first and emboss after, emboss first then ink, or you can do both, and you can apply the ink to either the raised embossed side or the indented debossed side of either your embossing folder or your card - so loads of possibilites! I think my assortment of rainbow style inkpads and brayer are going to be in for a hammering cuz this is just too much fun!