Antiquing and Distressing: Coffee, it's not just for drinking

So you have a cool graphic or some text in nifty, old looking font; but the paper you print it on is just bright and white and new. Too bad you don't have any old looking parchment hanging around in your house. Do you drink instant coffee?..You do... Oh man, are you in luck. You can use that coffee to to make new paper look old.

Wet page with granules

Make a mixture of one tablespoon of instant coffee and a half cup of warm water. Print out your graphic or text on regular paper, and paint the mixture heavily on the back side of your graphic. Flip it over and do the same thing on the front. When paper gets wet the fibers absorb the liquid and stretch causing it to wrinkle. This may cause small puddles of coffee on the paper. Don't worry. This will just make it look better.  Take a few granules of instant coffee and sprinkle them over the wet page. They will dissolve slowly and make a nice dark stain where they lay.





Don't worry if it looks a little dark, it will lighten up as it dries.

Finished page 

A few words of caution to this tale:


Aging and distressing can be easily over done, as soon as you start to ask yourself  hey, is that enough granules on there or should I add more? the answer is, STOP.


If your graphic is not on the computer, but already printed on paper, you might want to test this on another piece of paper to get the hang of it before you do it on your one and only graphic.

Coffee staining is not colorfast. If your page stays dry, no problem. If it gets wet again the color will run. (It may make your piece look older and cooler)

Some other sites say you can stain the paper first and then run it through your printer. I've done it. It works. But do I really want to run a 2 cent piece of coffee stained paper through my $200+ printer?...NO.

Credit where it's due.
Half of the stuff I've learned about aging and distressing I've learned from propnomicon.blogspot.com. It's a site devoted to prop making for role playing games based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. If you like Halloween, you'll like this site.