How to make paper look older

[Thibault]

It might have been already talked about...

But I have found a nice tip to make the paper looking older !

COFFEE !!!!!

You just have to pour some coffee mixed with some yellow paint in a plate, then, soak into the coffee your paper... wait few minutes, dry your paper and you are good to go !



TADAAAAAAM !!!!!

 

[MaXer]

Also, leaving it in the sun, to get the faded letters is good. I've just taped a paper to a window (after the coffee trick), turned out pretty good.

 

[Thibault]

Thanks for the sun trick !

 

[TomVDJ]

Thibault, I don't want to temper your enthousiasm, but thee and coffee are the best known aging techniques for ages and known by pretty much every prop-maker ;-). I don't think you tell something new here...

No need to add paint, though. Just use very strong coffee or thee. If you want a speckeled look, dry the paper with a hair dryer. If you want a more even tan, let the paper dry withou heating it.

You can repeat the treatment to have darker shades of aging. Also you can use an oven on low temperature for drying the paper. Keep in mind that every method of rying the paper has it's influence on how the result will look like. I prefer letting the paper just dry on it's own, without heating.

For extra speckles: throw some "bistre" (= some kind of natural dark brown pigment) particles on the still wet paper.

Also lemon juice can have a nice effect: spray it very lightly over the paper, and iron it. You'll see that the lemon juice will turn the paper very dark when you iron over it. But you'll have to experiment with it (add some water to the juice for a less dark effect).

 

[TomVDJ]

Also, leaving it in the sun, to get the faded letters is good. I've just taped a paper to a window (after the coffee trick), turned out pretty good.

Indeed, you can do this to fade the printing.

However, leaving paper in the sun to get it yellow, doesn't work that good nowdays, since the chemical element that causes the paper to go yellow or brown (lignin) in the sun, is not present in most modern paper (xerox paper) today. So you can leave that paper in the sun als long as you want, it will stay white.

So it is possible that the printing fades, but the paper itself will stay white if it doesn't have lignin in it.

 

[Thibault]

Damn it .... I was thinking that I had invented a revolutionary effect that would replaced the Sepia and photoshop stuffs !!! :confused

Thank you very much for the the other solutions BTW !! I will try that !

 

[Angelus Lupus]

And if you're using instant coffee, a couple of granules dropped randomly on the damp paper makes for good 'stains'

 

[TomVDJ]

And if you're using instant coffee, a couple of granules dropped randomly on the damp paper makes for good 'stains'

Yeah, that's true. Stains are more brownish then, while bistre is much darker (that's personal taste off course). But bistre is harder to obtain than instant coffee.

I also forgot to mentsion: if you want burned black edges on paper, you can also use lemon juice: just tear the edges of the paper and soke the edges in pure lemon juice. Then iron these edges. They'll become very dark, like the edges are burned. Me myself get better result this way, than actually burn the edges...

 

[juno]

I have a tutorial up on agin paper with walnut ink: Curious Goods - My Collection of Wizardly Things - Aging Paper

 

[Silverstag]

Personally I think Sepia ink is nicer for just slightly aged paper.

 

[Bandit959]

I have a tutorial up on agin paper with walnut ink: Curious Goods - My Collection of Wizardly Things - Aging Paper

This is a great tutorial. It's perfoect for a YouTube or Vimeo video

 

[kid2000]

i allways wondered what would happen if you slightly damped some paper the stuck it in a bright window to dry and repeat would it take on teh age look after a few days cos it would be a great way to start preping for future projects. and before you say yes i could test it myself but there doinng and there typing and i know what i prefer lol

 

[TomVDJ]

It won't work with regular xerox-paper, since that lacks lignin (which causes the paper to become yellow/brown).