Tutorial

On Wednesday, someone from the Bugaboo (www.bugaboostamps.com/ design team gives a tutorial for our readers.  Today is my turn!  I'm going to show you how to make a background using a brayer and rubber bands.  Here are the supplies that you will use in this project:

What I have is white glossy cardstock, assorted sizes and widths of rubber bands (I bought a one pound bag of assorted sizes at Big Lots for $1.00), an inkpad of the color you choose to use on your card--mine is memento tuxedo black), and a brayer.  Here are the steps:

1.  Remove the roller from your brayer.  Mine just slips out of the ends.

2.  Wrap various width rubber bands individually around the brayer.  Some will be longer so you may have to wrap them several times.  See picture below:

3.  Ink up the brayer.  Be sure to get all areas of the brayers inked.

4.  Roll brayer over your glossy cardstock (you really can use regular cardstock--I just like the glossy better for this technique!).  Only roll the brayer over the cardstock ONE TIME!  Do NOT repeat or back up your rolling.  This will muddy or blur your design.

5.  You can clean the ink off the roller and repeat with a different color to add some drama--if you wish.  I did not want to!

Here is my background.  To me, when done in black, this background looks like bamboo.  Different colors give it different looks.  Here is mine:

For my card using this background, I used a free image that Jodie gave called Edward the Elephant.  I colored the pads of his feet, but paper pieced the rest of the elephant using SU paper.  I used my rubber band background as I would have used designer paper.  I followed a sketch from Tuesday Morning Sketches.  I also matted the image on SU paper, and used Papertrey cardstock for my card.  I cut a scalloped border using Papertrey's new border die, added Papertrey ribbon, and used four pieces of yellow bling.  I think this card turned out cute!!  Check it out, and try this technique yourself.  When you do this, please share your creation with me.  I would love to see it!

This card will be entered into challenges at the following:

1.  http://squigglefly.blogspot.com/

Challenge SFC 38 was to use fun borders.

2.  http://cardsformen.blogspot.com/

Challenge # 5 was to use paper piecing to create a card for a man or a boy

3.  http://tuesdaymorningsketches.blogspot.com/

I followed their sketch.

Remember the Bugaboo Going Green challenge runs through March 6 at 7:00 a.m. EST.

My thanks to my SU demo--Karen Cole.  She hosted a techniques series, and the rubberband technique was one of the ones she taught.