How to Make Old Paper with Tea Bags, Juice or Lemon

There are many reasons people want old paper. People use them for simple mock-ups of older documents, or for recreating historical documents. Likewise, some people use them for keepsakes such as scrapbooks. And you can also buy old papers which are commercially sold. These old papers are sold in sheets and are stained very professionally.

But believe it or not, there are simple ways to make totally new papers looking old and you can do that in the ‘sanctity’ and convenience of your home. It might not be as professional looking as the commercially sold sheets – but for some people it does the job anyway. Here are some ideas to consider if you want to make old paper at your home.

Brew up some coffee. The take a cookie sheet pan (or anything similar would do). Just make sure that it’s large enough so you can put your paper down fully flat on. Then pour that finished brew on the pan. Dip the paper into the liquid and let a minute or two pass. You got to make sure that the paper you’re trying to immerse in the brewed coffee is fully soaked.

The rule here is that the longer it soaks the darker the paper is likely to be. The darkness of the brewed coffee will tend to influence the results. If you can sprinkle some more coffee grounds onto the paper (while it’s soaking), this will add some extra dark spots. At this point, get the paper out of the water. Here, you can microwave the paper for 7 to 10 minutes. You can also cook it in your oven, but make sure it’s barely long enough to get the paper dried.  This way, you should get a yellowed and crinkled look and feel.

Tea Bag Method Old Paper

Don’t have coffee in your kitchen cabinet? No worries! You can make your old paper with simple tea bags. The tea bag method is pretty much same as the coffee method, but the only difference is that – you will use tea. And you got to face the fact that, the result here will be a bit different than that of the coffee method.

Things also depend a lot on what type of tea you are using and how strong it is. You can also consider just “painting” your paper with using a simple wet tea bag. Keep ‘brushing’ with the wet tea bag till you’re satisfied with the darkness of the paper. All you have to do is microwave or bake till the paper gets dry.

Lemon juice method

Another simple trick is to soak a piece of paper into lemon juice and let it stay like that for a while. Then pick it up and place in your oven so it cooks for some time. Like soaking, painting is also another option before you cook the paper in the oven. When the thing gets cooked for 10 minutes or so (should cook in a rather medium heat setting), you should get your old paper that looks yellow and wrinkled old paper. As an added bonus, it will look a bit charred around its edges.

Flame method

Some people prefer using this technique together with any one of those above mentioned methods. So the idea of flaming the old paper is rather a finishing technique. But make sure that you’re doing this outdoors on your driveway or on the patio. You can do it in your kitchen sink too. Take a candle or a kerosene lamp (a lighter would do) to just run that flame all along the four corners of the paper. You do this to bring a yellow and dark effect an old paper is supposed to have.