Two Ways To Age Paper (Coffee & Tea)

I wanted a variety of aged papers to cover books for my Thanksgiving Mantel.  Not having any walnut ink on hand, but having plenty of old coffee grounds (One needs to appear slightly perky at work after blogging all night) I thought why not give it a try. It just grew there and I tried tea as well.  Enter the tutorial on aging paper with coffee and tea:

Supplies

Got Paper?

Got Coffee or Tea?

Got Water?

You are good to go.

Coffee Steps

Mix some old coffee grounds in a shallow pan with hot water.  Put the paper in and stir and press the coffee grounds around the paper.  I let mine sit for a couple minutes to suck up the brown and then pulled the sheet out grounds intact and laid it on a old towel.  If you look at #3 I had some cheapo kids clothes hangers I used to hand up each sheet to dry.  The extra coffee brushes off when the paper is fully dry.

Tea Steps

Um… See coffee but leave it in longer and scrunch/squish the old tea bags onto the paper periodically.  You can see in #4 how wrinkling the paper makes such a difference from #2.  Not necessarily better, just an option for further aging the paper.

You can see how I used these papers on my Thanksgiving Mantel.

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