Vintage: Making paper & things look older

[Vero]

Good morning all!

I've finished most of my Christmas cards for this year (yes, I'm a bit last minute) but I've got this vision of "brown paper packages tied up with strings" for everyone.

I've picked up paper tags from the post office and dipped those in tea to make them look a bit "aged" and it sort of worked. What would you do next to give it age and style? Part of the problem is that I have a relatively small stash of inkpads & pens, in fairly bright colours so no vintage inkpads to do the work for me.

How would you best age the tags to look a bit more interesting before I stamp them or write on them? (Oh yeah, the finish needs to still be suitable to handwriting on top)

Oh wise ones, I look forward to hearing your ideas!

[bodrighy]

Have a look here for ideas (http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/%7Eroy/magictalk-wisdom/discussions/aging_paper.html)

Hope this helps

Pete

[minxybags]

Try out with used tea bags.
Cécile

[Seahorse]

Love the wax idea and the burning the edges, smoke idea.I may give those a go later, not that i need any aged paper, I just like to try these things.

[Stampinupgirl]

Go and have a look at some of the techniques on www.timholtz.typepad.com

There may be some things there that you can adapt to suit what you have, you can try using coffee or tea in place of some of the inks.

One technique that springs to mind is crumpling the tag then flatten out and rub the tea (or ink) over the top, it will make the crumpled areas darker and more prominent, you can then iron the tag before you embellish it!

[nettie]

What I've done before is to sprinkle some coffee granules over the still-damp tea-stained paper/card, it's supposed to look like the specks on old paper...fly droppings apparently!! Hehehehe...

[AnnieAnna]

:p Wish I'd known that when I was a teacher making pirate maps with the kids. Fly droppings! That would have been the icing on the cake....in a mega yuk way :D
AnnieAnna

[Vero]

Loving all the tips - I think I'll take the already-lightly-tea-stained tags and coffee-stain them, then burn a few edges. Muahaha pyromania! :D

I probably won't have time to make all the wrapping look fancy but I'll try to make at least a few of the items look funky in their wrapping paper!

[Vicki]

Alcohol inks are great for an aged look as well as crumpling up and ripping the edges of brown paper x

[craftybeader]

Distress ink pad on rubbed onto teflon sheet then spritzed with water.Rub the tag over this to get an aged look. Dry off with heat gun then scrumple tag and gently rub distress ink pad over the scrumpled paper. Iron tag flat when dry... et voila :D