You can match any color with oil-based wood stains. It helps if you used to be heavily into woodworking and have and have a lot of colors on hand that you can mix to match. For a brown brooks I'd use walnut stain. I got a good match to Brooks honey using a provincial stain that has a lot of yellow in it along with a bit of walnut. You can shellac it once it dries. I've never used that fake cork tape, but I've done several of those grips that are made from ground up cork. I can't post pictures because they're all on Webshots and it is dead. I haven't had time to figure how how to transfer them all to another hosting site.