Speedball pop-in brayer review

I was searching for a better way to apply fabric ink to linoprints and came across the Speedball Pop-In brayer set. It comes with five pieces including one handle and four different 4″ rollers that have different purposes. I decided to try it out and share my thoughts with you. 

I have quite a few Speedball brayers so I’m quite familiar with the brand. I consider most of their products to be great for beginners. More advanced printmaking artists may want to upgrade to higher quality tools and supplies. I still use their soft brayers regularly when I’m printing – they aren’t perfect but they’re very reliable and easy to use. 

In this set, each roller can be removed from the handle. This means you can swap out different brayers depending on what you’re working on. This is a huge benefit because you don’t need to buy several brayers. It is also much easier to clean because you can remove the handle and clean ink from all corners. 

Below, I share my experience testing out the different brayer types in this set or watch me on my YouTube channel.

Soft brayer (the beige one)

This is a familiar brayer to me. I absolutely love a soft brayer including as I mentioned above, some Speedball brayers. Unfortunately, I struggled with this one. The packaging says that it’s great to block bring on paper. I used it to print a carving I recently completed and it was a struggle. The roller clicks into the handle and doesn’t roll very smoothly. It gets hung up very easily, especially at first. I struggled to roll out the ink enough. Occasionally, the roller would lock up and I’d smear ink instead of milling ink. It was also a challenge to roll out on the lino block. I had to press down quite heavily to be able to get the roller to consistently roll which sometimes led me to pushing my block. I was eventually able to get decent prints but it took me at least twice as long as it should have. 

Hard brayer (the solid black one)

The box says this is for block printing on fabric but I’ve always used a soft roller for this. I did try printing on paper but I wasn’t able to properly mill the ink and have it apply all around the roller. It’s as though the roller isn’t consistently the same thickness everywhere. Any slight depressions in the roller will remain ink-less, which makes it impossible to properly roll ink onto a lino block. I ended up pressing quite heavily and eventually was able to apply enough ink onto the block but it wasn’t as easy as it should be. I’ve had this same issue with other Speedball hard brayers which is why I avoid them. 

Textured brayer (the spongy black one)

I bought this set because I wanted to try this brayer. I generally use a soft brayer for almost all my prints and I’ve heard that a sponge roller is great for applying fabric ink and printing onto fabric. I tested this out and while I had some struggles with the roller not rolling properly, it printed very nicely onto fabric. I’ll definitely be using this brayer again. 

The packaging says it’s for adding textured effects which it would definitely work for. I didn’t test that but I could see the textured on my plate as I milled the ink. 

Glue brayer (the solid clear one)

The box says this roller will help you glue with ease. I don’t have a ton of experience with collages or similar projects but I have been trying out chine-colle (a process of combining collage and printmaking). I tested out rolling nori rice sticking paste, which is a starchy glue, and applying it to mulberry paper. It worked very well. Before this I struggled with applying the glue with a brush but this roller made it a snap. 

I will say that you would fill up your inking plate with sticky glue as you work through several pieces of collage paper. Someone with more experience in this field probably knows the trick to avoiding making a big mess. I’m guessing just cleaning as you go or swapping out your inking plate once you’ve covered it with too much glue might be a solution. 

Final thoughts

Ultimately, the place where the rollers pop into the brayer are just a bit too small for the rollers so they don’t roll very smoothly. It might be an issue that goes away over time or could be solved with a bit of sandpaper. I’d worry that at some point, the rollers might fall out too easily which would be a huge mess. 

The brayers themselves are hit-and-miss. I will absolutely use the sponge and clear roller for certain projects. If I have dirtied all my soft rollers, I’d probably use the soft beige roller. The hard black roller is terrible and I probably will never use it again. 

So should you buy it? If your budget and your storage space is very tight, then it might be worth it. I would recommend buying individual brayers instead, for your needs. This set cost me around $50 on Amazon. I’ve seen the price range from the mid $40s to high $50s, so it’s not an inexpensive set. You probably won’t be able to find four different brayers within that price range but you can likely find two or three that should roll more smoothly. 

I haven’t found a good individual textured spongy brayer but as soon as I find one, I’m sure I’ll purchase it due to the challenges with this set. 

Get your own brayers

Pick up your favourite brayers at your local art supply store or on Amazon:

US

• Speedball Pop-In 4-in-one brayer set
• Soft brayer
• Clear acrylic brayer
• Hard brayer

Canada

• Speedball Pop-In 4-in-one brayer set
• Soft brayer
• Clear acrylic brayer
• Hard brayer