I just love everything vintage. This means that I also love tea dyed paper and embellishments! I have been tea dying some papers and doilies and decided to share this technique with you. It is really easy and the results are amazing!
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Technique:
1. Boil some water and add it to a container with some tea bags (be careful with the boiling water!).
2. I use about 1 liter of boiling water with 6 black tea teabags in a teapot. You can use any kind of tea or even coffee for different colours and effects. I just find that the black tea works the best for what I want to achieve – a nice sepia feeling.
3. The tea should be nice and strong.
4. Add it to a container/deep pan, big enough to fit the tea and your pages.
5. Let it cool down a bit.
6. Now add your pages one by one.
7. Make sure they are covered with the tea (you can press it down with a spoon).
8. Leave your pages in the tea for at least 30 minutes.
9. I prefer to leave mine for an hour or even more.
10. The longer it stays in the tea the darker it will become.
11. After an hour, I take it out one by one.
12. Take it out very carefully in one smooth movement. The paper can easily tear at this stage. I take the paper by 2 corners when I pick it up.
13. Place it carefully on a plastic tray (a baking tray or a cookie sheet also works well).
14. Leave to dry.
15. If you want to create a print on the tea dyed page you can add a stencil or plastic doily now.
16. Add your stencil or plastic doily on top of the paper as soon as you put it on the tray.
17. Make sure the stencil touches the page everywhere. It will only create the print where it touches.
18. I have found that the plastic doily needs some tea added to the top to create the best print. I do this with a spoon.
19. Now leave your pages to dry.
20. I put mine in front of a fan to make the process go a bit faster.
21. I know that it takes a lot of patience not to peek, leave the stencils until the paper is completely dry else you can spoil the outcome.
22. I have done lots of experiments with this, but I still don’t know why some pages turn out darker than others.
Pages and paper doilies with different colours that have been in the tea the same amount of time
23. I do know if you add some extra tea on top of the stencil after you put it down on the wet page, it will make the print image darker.
24. After you have taken all your pages out you can add your paper doilies to the tea water.
25. Follow the same instructions for the doilies.
26. I put my paper doilies on baking paper to dry. They are so fragile, and they sometimes get stuck on the trays.
27. After everything is dry, you will see that the pages and doilies are not flat.
28. I use my heat press to flatten out my pages and embellishments. You could use a traditional iron as well. (don’t use the steam setting).
29. These pages and embellishments can now be used in any paper projects like junk journals, scrapbook pages and cards.
Products used:
- Black tea bags
- Boiling water
- Copy paper (this is what I used, but you can use any paper / cardstock that you want to dye)
- Paper doilies
Tools used:
- Tea pot or similar container
- Deep pan (like an oven roaster)
- Plastic trays or something similar like a cookie sheet
- Plastic stencils or plastic doilies
- Fan
- Baking paper