Making Paper Look Old, a How-to
From projects on the Boston Tea Party in 5th grade, to attempting to dupe my friends into thinking I found a real pirate map, when I was a youngin’ I was always in need of a way to make stuff look old. My parents were smart to keep the matches hidden, and I was left with dabbing tea bags on crumpled and ripped up paper. It was always a let down! In the end it looked like I had left my notebook out in the rain, or at best, the cat had peed on it.
Now that I’m older and have access to things like matches and coffee grinds, it’s easy to make stuff look old, and you can too!
Supplies:
- paper (preferably with something cool on it, find some good old-looking fonts at dafont.com and get to work!)
- coffee grinds
- matches
- water
- shallow baking sheet (but make sure it has at least a 1/2″ edge
- oven
How-to:
1. Take paper and crumple it up. Tear it if you want to, but I prefer not to put any intentional tears into it. If you are going to burn some of the edges, this is a good time to do it. You can also do it at the very end. If you do light the paper on fire it’s important that you barely let the flame catch the edge of the paper, and then blow it out right away. This is best done over a metal sink, with a ready supply of water nearby. If you’re well practiced, you can also hold the flame close enough to the paper so it darkens, but does not actually light (I like to think of this as a very authentic effect, since real-deal pirate maps were quite obviously read at night or in a cave, by candle- or torchlight.)
2. Lay it on the baking sheet.
3. Dump a serious amount of coffee grinds on top. Put them all over the place. Huge clumps add more color later. Today I got lucky and had fresh coffee grinds, which worked especially well. I just dumped them on and added enough water to cover the paper. In the past, I’ve just made a really strong cup of coffee (so strong you wouldn’t even think to drink it). Pour that on top and then you can also add the grinds too.
Today I was making a gift certificate for an event Powder7.com is sponsoring for a ski area in Vermont.
4. Let it soak. Go do something for a few hours. The longer you can leave it, the better. Today I let mine sit for about 5 hours.
You can see all of the grinds and just enough water to cover the paper. The more water you use, the more diluted the grinds will get, so you want to use the minimum.
5. Carefully lift paper off of baking sheet and drain water. Wipe baking sheet clean and dry, and place paper back on it. It’ll have some stubborn grinds sitting on it, and that’s perfect.
6. Heat oven to 200 degrees. Once heated, slide baking sheet into oven.
7. ”Bake” for 8-15 minutes. Check frequently, I can’t stress that enough.
8. It’ll start to curl up around the corners, which means it’s drying out. It should feel pretty dry when it comes out.
Fresh out of the oven!
To top-off the presentation, I’ll either tri-fold it or roll it up, seal it with wax, and secure with a knot of twine.
I added a few more burnt edges, and called it a day.
Tags: DIY