Today, many young ladies are fond of such applied arts as scrapbooking. They make all kinds of notebooks and albums by hand, which are sometimes so beautiful and unique that they can be safely put up for sale and ask for a lot of money.
Notebooks that look almost like antiques are especially fond of: yellowed, rumpled, slightly singed, as if they had gone through a revolution and wars. Such diaries look vintage, stylish and unique, because even the artificial aging of paper cannot be done in exactly the same way. If you are on fire with the idea of getting such a glamorous album for records, clippings and photographs, then you can start making sheets for it right now. Choose any of your favorite ways to give plain printer paper a shabby look and start the fun process.
The first and most common way to age paper is as follows: make strong tea leaves from blackloose leaf tea (from five to ten teaspoons of tea is taken for 200-250 ml), insist it for ten minutes, filter and pour into a bath (a plastic paper tray will do). Next, take a sheet that you want to see shabby and outdated, and lower it into the tea tray for a couple of minutes. The paper can be wrinkled a little beforehand (straighten it before immersion) so that the effect is greater. Now we remove the sheet from the tea leaves and put it on a flat surface so that it dries out. You can try drying it on a clothesline, as you used to dry photos, attaching it to a clothespin. Carefully iron the dried sheet with an iron. You can make paper aging even more realistic by putting a couple of blots of tea leaves on the sheet. And you can carefully, observing fire safety, singe the edges with a candle or a lighter. Then your sheet will definitely acquire a “post-war” look.
The next method, how to age paper, is similar to the previous one, but in
the place of tea is coffee, and natural ground. It is necessary to pour five teaspoons of coffee with a glass of boiling water and hold under a tightly closed lid for ten minutes. After that, the solution must be carefully drained and left for a few more minutes so that the entire sediment settles. Further, the procedure is the same as in the "tea" method, with the only difference being that the paper needs to be kept in the solution a little longer - about five minutes. If you overexpose, the leaf will completely soften, and you can only remove it in parts.
And another interesting way howaging paper. It will need about 150 ml of fatty, preferably homemade milk and a soft thick brush. Although you can use a foam sponge. We well coat the wrinkled (or not wrinkled, as you wish) printer sheet with milk on both sides and leave it for a while so that the paper is soaked. After that, let the sheet dry and iron it.
There is an even more natural way to age paper. But this requires summer and a lot of sun. It is desirable that for two or three days the paper is exposed, albeit not too intense (to avoid ignition), but still attacks by sunlight. During this time, it will turn yellow by itself.
