How to Antique Paper

By: Diy maven Feb 02, 2007

I saw Martha "antique" paper a few years ago, and although I don’t remember her technique, I do remember that it was complicated. I played around with the general idea, though, and came up with an easy way to get the same aged look.

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What You Need

A piece of paper you want to age. (I used regular 24lb laser paper. Of course, print your poem, passage of writing, and etc. to the page before you attempt to antique it.)

1/4 cup of hot, black coffee. (Although I’ve only used coffee, I’m sure tea would work.)

A teaspoon or so of instant coffee. (I haven’t used fresh ground coffee or tea leaves, but they might work too.)

A baking sheet larger than the piece of paper you want to antique.

Sponge brush, or soft bristle brush.

Paper towels.

An oven.

What You Do

Pre-heat oven to lowest setting. For me it was 200 degrees.

Crumple up your piece of paper into a ball, then smooth it out and place in your baking sheet.

Pour hot coffee over your paper. Spread coffee over/around your paper with a sponge brush. (I puddled a little too much in the lower left corner in the picture below.)

Sprinkle instant coffee over your paper.

Let stand for a few minutes, letting the coffee crystals "blossom."

Using a couple of paper towels, dab the coffee up so none is pooled on the baking sheet or paper.

Slide sheet into oven. Keep a watch on your project just in case of flame ups.

"Bake" sheet for about five minutes or until paper is dry. You can tell it’s drying when the edges of the paper start to curl up.

What To Do With It

Frame your antiqued poem or passage for a great-looking piece of cheap art; or use it to make your sweetie a heart-felt Valentine. Antiqued paper also looks great as a backdrop for photographs, serving as recessed matting. (I’d only use copies of treasured photos for archival reasons, however.)

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paper, antiqued, howto

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Comments

Michelle 4 evea
Oct 24, 2009

I think you so much for this idea I would of never known what to do for ageing paper for ny projects.:] (hint:burn the edges for some more aged look.)

Cheska
Oct 19, 2009

i love this idea, but i doubt it would work on this handwritten note my friend gave me, would it? she wrote an excerpt of Romeo and Juliet on the paper, but i think the ink will smudge. oh well, shall find something else to make antique :D

I never thought of sprinkling instant coffee! What a great idea!

Rick
Apr 27, 2009

thanks man i need to write a book about romeo and juliet and this will make it lokk sweet as hell thanks a lot man.

We do this for our kids every now and then but with tea instead of coffee. We take the paper, draw a pirate map on it, crinkle it up, rip a few corners and then antique it. Voilà...authentic pirate treasure map for the kids to take on an advernture. Sometimes we then laminate it so it lasts longer and holds up to rolling it up and unrolling it 20 times a minute.

Cool tutorial ! Great idea !

I'm all for it! I think it'd be awesome to help users get a better idea of how to write a great how-to.

Maven,

I think it's a great idea. I'm trying really hard to make things concise and complete as well as snappy and clever. Maybe I'm shooting for too much. I've been searching for something that gives some technical writing direction on a how-to, but I haven't found anything. If someone was right next to me in my studio, I could teach them and show them at the same time. I love the idea!!!

MHET, that's not a bad idea! I've never thought about writing such a thing. I'll run it by Bruno and see what he says. Maybe it could even be a feature article??

DIY-

How about doing a post on writing a really good How-To and posting it. I am trying to improve my tutorial skills. Hellllppppppp!!!!!

Cool tut - I've seen a lot of vinage 'tea stained' stuff as well - this helps me because I have to grunge up stuff and scan for the digital scrapbook kits I design (that look is really in)...

I remember I did this in third grade on a project. I used tea and i soaked it. It came out good too but not as good as you did here(with the coffee).

I also took a match and burned a few areas and immediately blew them out and let the paper get 'singed' a little more and a tiny bit more of a used look.

Great idea here with a poem.

thanks!

Hey b_o_cs! Absolutely, a hot dry iron will help with the wavies.

great work! but the shett is a bit wavy... how may it 'ironing'???

We always used tea to age the treasure maps we made, when I was growing up. Then after the tea had dried, we'd rub a tiny bit of vegetable oil over the page, which made the stained paper turn translucent and look more the way we imagined parchment did. Sometimes we'd burn the edges, but it was risky - you could lose a map that way if you weren't paying close attention.

Great post! I've done this, but I used tea instead and I didn't have to bake it. You can also burn (very carefully) the edges.

Kewl! I remember doing this as a kid, but with lemon juice, salt, and (I think) cream of tartar (NOT baking soda/powder for sure!). Sprinkle the powder on the paper, then spritz with the lemon juice from a spray bottle or spatter with a toothbrush. Bake in a low oven until dry. The spots where the lemon juice stuck more would darken, yielding a parchment look. It was a variation on the idea of using lemon juice as invisible ink that gets revealed when warmed over a candle flame.

Your method is just as good and no doubt will be a lot less smelly. ;o)

Thing to remember with paper treated with acid (coffee and tea are acidic, too) is that the acid will continue to eat away at the paper and anything else the paper comes into contact with, so it shouldn't be used in scrap books, or enclosed with any item of value (stray humidity can pick up the acid and affect items not in direct contact) so ixnay on sealed cases/shadowboxes, too.

No first-hand experience on this, but theoretically you should be able to neutralize the acid by soaking the finished paper in baking soda solution. Try an experiment with this before doing it to a nice project, though, to see if there are any unexpected effects (bleaching, loss of fiber strength, etc.).

Way to go, Maven! This is a really cool tutorial.

BTW, if you want your new antiqued paper to be nice and flat, you can iron it at a medium/high setting. No steam, of course ;)