DIY: Aging Paper with Coffee

 So old-looking paper is oh-so-cute and vintage. Since, however, I don't have a couple years to wait around and let it naturally age, here is a way to create aged paper within a couple hours, ready for use for crafts, letters, and artsy projects of any kind.

What you need: 

Boiling water. I'm not sure that you need it to be boiling or even hot, but this is what I do. 

Instant coffee

A plain piece of white paper 

A low-rimmed pan big enough to accommodate your soon-to-be-vintage paper.  

 Fill the pan with the boiling water. Fill it full enough to nicely cover the paper.

 Pour in some instant coffee. The water needs to be pretty dark to darken the paper enough. 

 Put in the paper and allow to soak. I think mine was in for a little over an hour.

Put it on a drying rack to dry. 

Here is the finished product!

I'm not sure what those black marks are from, and the edges did get a few small rips, but hey, it's supposed to be old, right? :) I ironed the paper after it dried, to try to flatten out the drying rack marks. 

The reason I used coffee is because tea staining hasn't shown itself to be dark enough for me. This way of staining also doesn't make the paper really really dark. 

For a tutorial for making the paper even darker and older looking, click here.

Also in this tutorial you will learn how to take out the coffee smell.

Of course, coffee smell is so yummy...

Have fun! 

P.S. This is the type paper I used in my post about Writing and Folding a Regency Style Letter.

The Letters-No.5

This letter was a little time consuming, but easy to make. I cut strips out of pieces of paper from Michael's, just random strips that weren't all the same size. The color theme was black, white, grey, pink, and purple. I had some solids and some patterns. I put the metal piece (also from Michael's) in the middle with a pink paper center, and then fastened the strips around it. I used sticker squares to fasten the strips on, but I needed to cut the stickers to size. I wrote the "M" in the middle with a calligraphy pen.

    

 

The Letters-No. 4

 This was by my friend, to me. :) She used tea to stain the envelope a vintage brown, and then added the flowers. She printed the flower template off Martha Stewart, and then used a crafting knife to cut out the flowers by hand. I heard that she gave me the gift of time in making this letter. :) 

Friends, friends, don't you love them?

Writing and Folding a Regency Style Letter

Because I am a fan of all things Regency (for a definition of Regency click here) I am going to show you how to write and fold a Regency Style Letter! I learned this from The Jane Austen Handbook which happens to be in the possession of my friend Kate. I looked at one of her letters to me for the folding technique, and read about the style of writing in the book.

 So, first write the letter. I made this paper look a little older by soaking it in coffee, and then made a oh-so-fun attempt to write a letter, Regency Style! For the tutorial on aging paper with coffee, click here.
You know, Regency style isn't exactly like modern American style. No perfect pages were effortlessly typed in uniform font back then.

In order to preserve paper, letter-writers from the Regency period would write like so:

 

And not only that, but they also wrote in a third direction: diagonally! I didn't attempt that feat. :) 

I also put a white paper with dark black lines on it underneath the brown paper so that I would have some lines to guide me.

 

 

Once you are done having fun writing the letter, you can now fold a letter Regency Style.

1. First fold the letter in from the sides two times, meeting in the middle. 

 

 Then fold the letter up from the bottom. Fold it into four sections. The picture above illustrates the sections without the folds.

Sorry, I don't have a picture of the first fold. 

Leave the top section a little shorter to leave space to put a wax seal.

To finish it off, seal it with a wax seal. Gartner Studios has great seals.

And by the way, I got a really awesome box to keep my letters in. I got it at Ross, since they have a big selection of them. 

 

Pretty cool, huh? 

Have a happy Saturday!

The Letters-No. 3

This is letter I designed for my friend. Both types of paper and the ribbon was from Michael's craft store. I did have the initials of the recipient written in calligraphy on the empty red section, but I removed them, as the recipient does not wish to be known. :) 

I wrapped the ribbon around the envelope after I put the letter in. :) I just fastened it with rubber cement a couple of places to hold it together, and sealed the ends together with a wax seal. I got my wax sealing kit online from Gartner Studios, but you can get them for a better price online at Kohls.  

 

Have an awesome day!

The Letters-No. 2

Here is another letter I decorated for my friend. I got the idea from Martha Stewart's website.

For instructions, click here.   

The Letters-No. 1

I am going to start a series on this blog called "The Letters." My friend and I love to write letters back and forth, since we don't see each other very often. We also love to decorate the envelopes of the letters. And so, I am going to post pictures of the envelopes, to give my readers ideas for decorating envelopes. So,I'm gonna put one that my friend did for me.

I love this one. :)

She really made this letter awesome! She put the paper and stitching on half the envelope, and that gorgeous carnation-like flower. Then she wrote in cursive to finish the elegant look. We call each other by make-believe names, thus "Peggy" on the front of the envelope. lol

The theme, as you can see, is "Classy Carnation."

I think that one of my blogging friends, Katelyn, will be posting how to make this particular flower, but she is undergoing blog construction, so it isn't available yet. :)
Have a awesome day!