Old Paper Tutorial

Antiquing Paper

In this tutorial we will learn how to make things look old and wrinkled. There are a lot of methods to do this, but I prefer coffee. I like the color (as you can see by now, I like earth tones - the brighter the better).

Things you will need:
1. Cheap instant coffee
2. Tray or a plate or anything that will hold the desired size of the paper you are going to antique.
3. Gloves (if you are allergic to coffee)
4. An image (I'm using plain paper)

old paper

Pour water into the tray. Warm water dissolves the coffee faster, but cold is ok too. Add coffee. The amount depends on how drastic do you want the final result to look. I usually like to put as much as possible for a strong effect. Mix it up.

vintage paper

You can see that there is still some coffee that didn't dissolve in the lower right corner. Don't worry about it. We don't want a uniform look.
A WORD OF CAUTION: first time I did it, I mixed everything with my hands. The mixture was so strong that it probably got absorbed into my pores and needless to say I felt like crap afterwards. My heart was racing, i was shaking a little and so on. Perhaps I was imagining things, but I'm just letting you know that you might want to use a spoon or gloves when mixing this stuff.
Back to our project. Place the paper (or whatever you're using) into the water. Let it get wet completely. Keep it in the water until you have reached your desired color. What I did was wrinkle it like so:

old paper2

Then I took some more coffee and sprinkled it all over the paper.

vintage paper

The grains will start to dissolve, leaving black spots. The less you let it sit, the darker the spots and vise versa. Pour the water out. Here you can stop or continue further. With the back of a spoon I created folds by going over the paper.

old paper

Then I sprinkled more coffee on it.

vintage paper

Then I placed it on a paper towel and rolled over the spots with the back of a spoon.

old vintage paper

Now, if you want to add some more wrinkles, just crumble some areas like so:

old antique paper

Let it dry and you have your old and worn paper.

old worn paper

old torn paper

You're done. You can use this techniques for various items such as letters, images, photos. You don't have to do as drastic and messy. Just decrease the amount of coffee and time in the water.

Hope you have fun with this. If you have any questions, suggestions, feedback, do not hesitate to email me. If you like me to do a tutorial that is not listed here, do contact me as well. If I can, I will post one. For those of you who have tried this tutorial and absolutely loved the results, consider making a donation (paypal). You can give as little or as much as you want.

You can leave feedback to this tutorial in my BLOG