Brayered Glue Technique For Mass Producing Cards With Detailed Die Cuts

Have you ever wanted to mass produce a card design that used a detailed die cut? Did you stop short of doing so because of the work involved in adhering the die cuts to the card front? I believe I have found a workable solution!

I am loving the new Flourish Thinlits because they are so lacy looking! However, sometimes all that laciness is hard to work with because if you overlap one die cut with another, it looks a little odd.

To combat this odd look, you can adhere a die cut to a card stock backing and then overlap it with another die cut. Because I needed multiple cards that used the Flourish Thinlits adhered to a background, I tried a gluing technique that worked remarkably well.

I used the Flourish Thinlits to die cut flowers from Melon Mambo card stock and leaves from Cucumber Crush. The bottom two leaves were removed from each leaf die cut. A standard card base was cut from Thick Whisper White card stock, a 5 1/8 x 3 7/8" matte from Whisper White and a 5 1/4 x 4" matte from Basic Black.

I played with the layout of the flower and leaves on the white matte, being sure to leave room for the sentiment. Once I was satisfied with my design, it was time to adhere the Melon Mambo flowers to a Whisper White backing.

For my Brayered Glue Technique, I placed some liquid glue on one side of my craft mat and rolled my brayer through it to completely coat it. I made sure to roll the brayer back and forth a few times to even out the glue and get rid of any blobs.

On the opposite side of my craft mat I flipped two flowers upside down. I held them in place just until the brayer had rolled over the edge of them. Once the glue was applied, I carefully placed the flowers on the Whisper White card stock background and smoothed them down with my hand.

I repeated this gluing process until all the flowers were glued. Immediately after smoothing down the last flower, I rinsed my mat and my brayer thoroughly under the tap. Unfortunately, because some of the glue dried on the mat while I was gluing additional flowers, I ended up with some sticky residue that would not come totally come off the mat. (I may still be able to scrub the glue off my matte but just in case I can't remove it, I recommend that you use a sheet of wax paper as your working surface.)

While my flowers were drying, I prepared my white matte by adding black splatters to it. I did this by dipping an Aqua Pen, filled with rubbing alcohol, into Basic Black Archival reinker and flicking the pen with my finger. Alcohol was used instead of water so that the drops would dry quicker.

To produce the largest drops, I made sure to squeeze my Aqua Pen until I had a large drop forming at the end and then flicked it. The finest splatter marks were made by using the Tim Holtz Splatter Brush.

To ensure that my matte was dry, I zapped it with my Heat Tool. Choosing a sentiment from the now retired Love You Sew stamp set, I used pieces of washi tape to mask off all but the "thanks" in the sentiment. I inked up the stamp with Basic Black, removed the washi tape and stamped. This matte was then adhered to the black matte with Fast Fuse and then adhered to the card front using Dimensionals.

I fussy cut the flower and then used Dimensionals to attach it to the card front. I used liquid adhesive to adhere the leaves just under the edge of the flower to complete the card.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my Brayered Glue Technique! If you use this technique, please let me know how it works for you!