How To Tea and Coffee Stain Paper: Aging Paper

I have seen a lot of people posting about this wanting to know how to properly tea or coffee stain paper and how to achieve aged paper without having to wait 100 years for it to be fully aged. You may remember some of these pages from a previous post but I wanted to share more about how I did it.

 

• First you will need some supplies:

• Water
• Tea or Coffee
• Wax Paper
• Regular Copy Paper*
• Cookie Sheet
• LOTS OF COUNTER SPACE
• Paper Towels
• Oven / Stove / Microwave / Toaster Oven (optional)
• Oven Mit

* Any kind of copy paper will do but you need to print out any images or text from the computer onto the paper BEFORE you stain it. Any painting or drawings by your own hand will come AFTER you've stained your pages. Especially if you plan to use water-based paints.

 INK JET PRINTERS ARE A NO!
 

Go to Staples or a printing center and have them print your pages with a laser printer. The ink from ink jets will run and smear.

• So next thing you are going to do is make your tea! Go ahead and heat your water in your tea kettle OR you can heat it up in the microwave or oven. Whatever you need to do.

I seeped 4 bags of tea into a big pan and then used the tea to dye the pages by spooning the water onto the paper, smeering the paper with the tea bags and dangling the teabag so the tea would drop in certain spots.

• Next you will need to pour your tea into a container that you can place the paper into (even color). You can also keep it in a cup and spoon the tea onto the paper (this produces an uneven color: shown below).  
• Allow the tea to cool down enough so that you can touch it. You'll be putting the paper in with your hands and pulling it out with your hands. You don't want to burn yourself.
• If you plan to use an oven or toaster oven and haven't already, Pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees F
• Cut several sheets of wax paper to be about the size of your paper. It needs to be slightly wider and longer than the page you are working with.
• If you have a large enough container to submerge your paper into the tea then place your paper into the tea mixture and let it sit for a few minutes.
• If you are using the spoon / tea bag method of applying the tea to your paper, place your paper onto a wax sheet. 
• Place that wax sheet with your paper onto your cookie sheet.
• If you have submerged your sheet to get an even color gently pull the paper up and place it onto your wax paper.
• If you are spooning or spreading the tea by bag begin to do that now. You can cover as much or as little as you want. You can pool the tea in some areas or brush over the whole page. This is where you can get creative.
• Once you are finished playing it is time to dry your pages
• If you are using an oven/ toaster oven put the cookie sheet in the oven and wait.
• The time you "bake" your sheets depends on how dark you want your pages. Make sure to check on it every few minutes. The corners and edges will turn up and start to smoke and burn. If it catches fire you left it in too long - duh. Don't let it get that far. Best time is about 3-5 minutes depending on how saturated your paper is. If a majority of the paper is dried but has very lightly damp spots pull it out and let it air dry the rest of the way on the counter.
• If you aren't using an oven to dry then place your paper somewhere it will not be disturbed. You could also use a hair dryer but that will take forever. Either let it dry overnight (bath tub?) or bake it.
• Once the page is dry you may draw or paint on it as you'd like or add it to your BOS.

 Tips/ Warnings:

• This will make your pages VERY brittle and stiff. Any creases or crinkles you want should be made BEFORE you start staining. This will allow the tea to sink into the creases and be darker there.
• If anything rips (for example when you are lifting it out of the pan you submerged it in) continue the drying process. When it is dry you can use modge podge or gel medium to piece it back together. Both will dry clear and leave the tear showing but will not pull apart as easily. I recommend doing one coat on the front (let it dry) and then do another coat on the back and let that dry. Adds to the aged paper look but won't split farther and ruin your work!
• This is also going to make the pages in a way thicker, if you want them to lay flat press them between two extremely heavy objects for at least 24 hours. You can do it while it dries if you are air drying your pages but it will take longer because less air will get to them this way. You'll also want to place wax paper between the sheets to keep them from sticking together.
• Coffee and tea will stain light counters and pretty much everything so don't wear a white t-shirt while doing this. Mr. Clean Magic Erasers work wonders in getting the stains off the counter if the wax paper doesn't prevent spills or droplets from hitting the counter.
• Do not try to run this paper through your printer. The uneven surface will not go through and you'll have wasted all that time and energy because it will ruin your page and maybe your printer. Print first then stain then paint with water-based paints or draw with inks. That's the order.  **I have gotten the paper to go through a few times, but it goes through easier on the section where I can place specialty paper. It flattens out the pages too but leaves the wrinkles. Very hard to explain but you can try to get your paper to go through, just do a test page!**
• Pencil works fine however before and after staining. Just know that if you use pencil and then stain the paper, it makes the pencil permanent. It won't erase after so if you need to erase guidelines, do it before you stain or make sure whatever you are doing you want that line to be there permanently or it gets covered up or something.
• I haven't tried oil pastels or oil paints (take too long to dry) on it yet but I would imagine they would need to be after staining as well.

Photographs of some of my tea stained pages:

These are tea dyed pages. The page on the left was the first page I did with the tea and the one on the right was the last.

At one point I seeped tea into coffee to see if that would give it a darker effect. Didn't do anything different.

Tea | Coffee | Combo

I did Passion Tea from Tazo on the Triquetra to get different colors

You can also burn the edges of your paper to make it look older. Be very careful when doing this. I recommend the following video: Burning Paper Edges

There you have it! The Aged Paper Look by using Coffee and Tea to Stain the paper! Let me know if you have any questions or comments.