Age paper using tea

This is my first instructable so bare with me as I attempt to put this fun and easy tutorial on the screen for you.

I made sweet tea today and had tea bags, so I decided to age some paper before tossing them in the trash.

This is how you achieve that old paper appearance to your craft and art projects.
I've even heard of people using tea bags to dye fabric.I'll try that and get back to you on it okay!

All you need is
tea bags
water
paper that you want to age. most any kind will work from drawing paper to card stock to stretched canvas
paper towels
and something heavy like a couple books

Step 1

First all you do is make some tea!
I brew tea on the stove top using a small pan about 6-8 tea bags and almost enough water to fill the pot.
after it nearly comes to a boil, I drain the tea water, and sugar my tea.
I sat the pot to the side with the used tea bags in it.

Comments

[adamazing]

I did this for wrapping paper for my brother one year. He loves music so I printed off some sheet music on A4 paper, aged it using tea and wrapped the CDs I bought for him using it. Because I needed quite a few, and was using loose sheets, I actually "made tea" with warm water in a large shallow baking dish and dunked each sheet, rolled the tea bag over various places and then hung them over a piece of string. I didn't actually notice much warping/rippling as it dried using that method, but I may be mis-remembering. I ended by scrunching the paper up, then flattening under heavy books and finally by singeing some of the edges/corners to increase the aged/lost manuscript effect.

[snapdragon77]

Great idea with soaking the paper I'll have to try that! ohhh and I so am going to try singeing the corners of my next painting to see how that looks with the aged look. Thanks for the great ideas!

[valhallas_end]

Heh, I remember making "parchment" by this method for grade school projects - old-timey journal pages - to impress teachers with ingenuity. Fun stuff...except cleaning up the inevitable mess!