How to ~ Tea Paper Tutorial

Remember I showed you how I dyed some cloth for my Vintage Styled Hair Bow Holder Tutorial using tea bags to get an ‘antique’ look?   Well, I thought I’d also do a tutorial on using similar techniques to antiquitize paper as well!

This tutorial is super easy and simple, but has a lot of potential if you do any sort of paper craft {ie, scrapbooking, card making,  origami, etc.}.  And even if you do not do any of those crafts, you still might find the principles of the technique useful as it can be adopted to dying natural cloths and other organic materials as seen in my previous tutorial.

Materials you will need:

~  Something to weigh the paper down ~ I used four glass cups

~  Paper to dye (the thicker the better, but this will work with ordinary printer paper}

~  Absorbent paper to go underneath so you don’t make a mess everywhere

~  A Tea Bag {black ~ I used English Breakfast}

~  Bowel {sorry, forgot to put this in the picture..  = __=’ }

 

Step One:  Lay out your absorbent paper, place the paper you are dying on top of it and weigh it all down with your glasses.

 

Step Two:   Wet your tea bag in a bowl of water.

 

Step Three:  Rub your wet tea bag over both sides of the paper and leave to dry.    This might take a while so be prepared to wait.  The thicker the paper is, the longer it will take to dry out.

Note:  An extra step to finish the paper quickly is to set your iron on low and iron the paper until it is dry.   Just remember to place the paper between two pieces of old cloth to keep it from dirtying your ironing board and your iron.

 

Step four:   Take your dry paper and use it to make something pretty!    As you can see, the colouration of the paper is very subtle, but this is because I only used one tea bag to turn it a light creamy colour.  If you wish to make it darker, use more tea bags the first time around and repeat the dying process after letting it dry. 

You can also use the iron trick noted above.  But if you are trying to make the paper darker, set the iron to high so you ‘burn’ the paper as well as dye it with the tea.  If you iron to ‘burn’ the paper, leave the top piece of cloth off so that the iron base has direct contact with the paper.  It will be more effective this way. 

Note:  With this technique of tea dying, it is not about getting a vibrant colour ~ you would be better off buying paper from the store if that is your desired outcome.  Tea bag dying is more about achieving a natural brownish hue/tone with whatever item you dyed to make it look older than what it is.  The darker you dye it, the older it will look, but as a reverse, the more you dye it the more fake it can look!  Experiment to find the right balance for the look you want.  

 

~ * ♥   I used the paper to make some labels for a customer who purchased an amigurumi charm from my Etsy shop  ♥  * ~

 

I hope you enjoyed this easy tutorial, and if you make anything cool {or anything at all!} using these techniques, please send me photos ~ I’d love to see what you make.

xox,

bonita

 

P.S.  ~  How exciting!!  Only two more days {a day and a half??} until Christmas!  Yay!!    

P.S. II  ~  Oh golly, I better get on with wrapping all the presents….  > o < !

P.S.  III  ~  I did get my Christmas cards sent out incidentally!  I am so stoked that I managed to get that far this year.   Now I just have to keep it up for next year!  ^ w ^