How to Age Paper - 6 easy technique to make paper look old

If you want to give a pristine white paper a browned, unevenly-colored aged appearance and parchment-like texture you need to use an aging technique. I love using my own aged paper for my vintage and steampunk projects. It's also very cost effective because you only need a few ingredients to create this effect instead of buying lots of expensive paper.

There are a few techniques to age paper:

Coffee

I'm not a coffee drinker but this aroma filled powder can be much more than just a bevarage, it can be used to age paper and give it a brown antique look.There are two ways to acheive this effect:

Painting with coffee

Dipping in coffee

Tea

Tea staining will give you a lighter color and more suttle result than coffee. You can use the tea bag itself to stain the paper directly or dip the paper in the tea. You can dry the stained paper in the oven or in a sunny place.

Tea Staining

Spray and Ink

Use a blender and a combination of distress inks like wallnut and vintage photo and ink your paper to achieve an aged look. Another technique is to spray the paper with spray ink.

Spraying

Paint

To achieve an aged effect with paint you would need a few shades of brown and to work in stages.

Layers of paint

Here's a really cool technique with shoe polish.

So many fun techniques to try. I hope you'll try at least one, because the effectis worth it! Do you have other techniques or ideas to distressor age papers? Share in the comments!

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Making a Family History Book Part 5

Welcome to the final part of the series. I can now update you that the heritage book I created won first place! So I guess they liked my ideas for an interesting original design...I hope you do to. I have a few more ideas to share...

Make it Your Own

Sometimes you have an idea but you don't have the right supplies. I wanted to create doors, as an interactive mechanism to present the text in this page. However, I've already used a mechanism like that on another page so I didn't want to repeat myself. I decided to use a paper that looks like a door and not just two paper flaps. The problem was I didn't have the right size of paper. the solution was to scan the pattern into my computer and enlarge it to the size I need. Then I added them to my layout and inserted the text under them.

Layering

One of the best ways to create an interesting page is to layer different paper and embellishments with the same theme. In this page I had to create a page about the immigration routes of the family. So instead of just adding a map and text I layered a travel themed paper as a background and added a sign as the legend.

Quotes

I love using quotes. They're a great way to add more layer of content to the text. It is also a solution when you have a short text or want to keep the page simple without too many embellishments. I used many quotes all throughout the book. You can find quotes on many websites just search the subject you want with the word quote for example: "family quotes".

Get Artistic

Sometimes the best way to add something extra to a text page is to get artistic. By that I mean think outside of the box in term of interpretation of the text and idea of the story. One of the subjects my son had to write about in the book was about "accepting the different". My son chose to write about Autistic people and how they can be integrated in society. So for this page I created a tare in the paper that is combined together with a string, two parts integrated. An abstract expression of an idea. 

That concludes this series...
If by now you have not started your own heritage book or at least created a few family pages I'm sure your fingers are itchy and you are just waiting for the weekend when you'll have more time :)
Please share your pages with me...

I hope you liked this series and if you did please let me know in a comment.

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Making a Family History Book Part 4

Welcome to the fourth post in the series! I hope you you were inspired to start your own family history book or to add some new ideas to the heritage projects you're currently working on.

More Photos space

I've used interactive opening flaps to increase the space for text, but it is also a great solution for more photos space. Create an opening flap with text on both sides and add photos on the part under it. this will also create an element of surprise and discovery to the history book and give the viewer a feeling of exploring and discovering the history themselves.

Interactive mechanisms

I've already explained how interactive mechanisms can increase space for text and photos, but these mechanisms can help you add content to the page. The same way you can use a theme to tell a part of the story you can use an interactive mechanism. In this page I created an opening envelope with a letter inside that is the the story of my grandfather. The envelope is part of the story by conveying the idea of him being away.

Other Forms of Text

The written word is a vast fascinating place that we can draw a lot of inspiration from. One way I presented the text is to arrange it in a form of a newspaper. I thought of a name for the newspaper, which is based on the family name of that side of the family and arranged all the text in columns similar to a news paper. I even gave each little story a headline and added advertisements and photos. Since most of the stories take place more than 60 years ago I found advertisements from that period online and added them for a more authentic look.

Make sure to tune in on Friday for the final part of the "Making a Family History Book" series!

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Making a Family History book Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of the series Making a Family History Book part 3. I hope you found the ideas I've shared so far inspiring and maybe even try a few of them.

 Gossip & Experiences

At first glance you might think it's inappropriate to include such things in a heritage book, but consider the fact that this book is a history book for generations to come. The experiences or gossip stories of today will be the treasured memories tomorrow. In this page, which is the opening page for the chapter about the immediate family, I added short sentences about special things we like to do together as a family.

Themed pages

Themed pages are pages which are designed according to a specific subject. A page like that is a great and creative way to tell a story about a person. By creating a page about space it is easy to understand that my other son is interested in this subject without using words.

Multiple Scenes

Creating multiple scenes as an embellishment for a page is another way to create a themed page, only a little more complex. The next page is made up of three pages designed as a book. On the left side of the page there is a scene of a little house among the trees. This scene is glued to the background paper and stay constant.

The right side of the scene is on the left side of the text page which opens up to reveal more pages. When you open the pages the scene changes! The first scene is a horse and carriage in the woods. The second page shows a group of tents in the woods and the third page shows two little girls with school bags on their backs.

The first two scenes were created by paper piecing and the last scene is an image I cut from a photo.

Use the Story

All scenes presented in this page were taken from the story in the text itself. You can find inspiration in any story and use elements from it to create embellishments on the page.

Tune in next Friday for the fourth post of the series!

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Making a Family History Book Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of making a Family History Book! I have some more tips for an old school traditional heritage scrapbook to share!

Use Office Supplies

Last time we stopped at the middle of the first chapter that was about the first link in the chain...my son. The next page is avout the school years and would be great as a design for Back to School page. I used an old fashion notebook for the text. I removed all the pages and inserted the printed cardstock that I cut to size.

The page when the notebook is closed

Note book opened

More Text Less Space

A great way to insert long texts to a limited space is to create interactive mechanism. A small notebook or booklet that measures 4"x6" will only take that space although it can include a lot of text. Print the text on flaps or fold A4 pages in half. This way you can use more that one A4 page aslong as you stackthem together.

Parallels and Contrasts

Use parallels and contrast to present the text. Oneof the things my son had to write about is how he sees himself today and how he sees himself in the future. Instead of presentingeach paragraph in a different page I create a "Time Clock". One side with the Today text and the other side with the Future text. I printedthe two texts in half a circle shape and added halg a clock that turns to reveal each side. This idea will be good for young Vs. old photos or story, Now and then, father and son and more.

"me Today" side

"Me in the Future" side

Symbols

The next page is about the Torah Portion. According to Judaism each man has a story in the bible that coordinates with his date of birth. each story is comprised from a few chapters in the bible that are called a portion. In the Bar-Mitzvah ceremony the boy readshis portion in the synagogue.
Historical events or religios events are the perfect opportunity to design apage with symbols. For this page I used a brick wall stencil to create a pattern that resembles the wailing wall (which is the part of the temple's wall that exist to this dayin Jerusalem).
If your grandfather was in the civil war you can use brass buttons, if you have a relative who came to the US when it was established you can add a parchment as a declaration of independence, or stars and banners for apage about a soldier.

Tune in next Friday for some more tips and tricks on how to create more heritage pages with a unique style and embellishments.

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have fun creating!

Making a Family History Book Part 1

My young son is turning 13 soon. This year it's his bar-Mitzvah year which means he has special events throughout the year not only with the family but at school too. One of the highlights of the year is creating a heritage book. This is a few months process where the kids find out about their roots and ancestors through interviews, photos, stories and memorabilia.

my son started this process in a very reluctant way, not really understanding why does he need to do such an elaborate work. Slowly he was captured by the stories about far away places and events, the old photos and the customs. He even got to the point of telling me: "I don't understand why we have a time limit on this and why we are graded on it. Such an important work should not be done under pressure. I don't care about the grade I'm doing it because it's important!"

15% of the grade is for presentation. Well...you really thought I would live that to him? I took the job to create our family history book. I didn't want to create a digital book, that seemed to plain for me. Everybody would have that. I wanted to make something special. I decided to create a traditional scrapbook! However I ran into a few problems... First there was a lot of text. Our family history is mostly about the stories and less about the photos, because a lot of them were lost in the Second WW. I had to find a way to include all the text and the photos of each family member on one page or I'll end up with more than a 100 pages which will be a ginormous scrapbook. My solution was to Create interactive pages! But then I ran into another problem...the page protectors, they were in the way. One friend suggested to cut the page protectors where the flaps were and another friend suggested to glue the pages on the protectors. I didn't like those ideas, so I decided to go really old school. I used an old fashion scrapbook with plain paper pages (something like a large sketchbook) that I could glue down the finished pages on.

The final result was AMAZING!

There are a lot of tutorials and blog posts online about how to create a heritage book, organize the materials and photos etc. I want to share with you the different style, approach and creative way that I created our heritage scrapbook. The text is all in Hebrew (and I blurred most of it) but the design is universal and can be done in any language.

Uniform Title

The scrapbook is divided to chapters. Each chapter started with a page in the same design. Hebrew is written from right to left so the chapter's title was on the top left corner. Each title was spelled with letter stickers and was embellished with a photo or an image and a lace ribbon.

I wanted the scrapbook to have a uniform design but not to be boring. All the pages have a vintage shabby chic look that goes well with the theme of heritage and history. I tried to give each page a unique look but still keep it with general theme. I used a lot of layering, travel and maps motifs as well as vintage ephemera. All the text was printed on A4 papers (I don't have a 12x12 printer...another problem I had to solve) that were cut in different sizes.

Photo Cutting & Collage

The first chapter is "I'm a link in the chain" and it is all about the writer of the work...my son, who is one link in the chain that is the family. One of the elements of one's identity is their name. So one page was dedicated to the meaning of the name. Next to the name I added a photo collage that seem to jump out of the page. Cutting the image of the person out of the photo is a very effective technique to use different photos and create a collage.

Echoing

One of the embellishments principles I used in this page was echoing. Echoing means you repeat an element in the design. In this page I echoed the word "chain" and added different kinds of circles as the links in it.

Blocking

An interesting way to present data, especially dates, numbers and such is to create blocks. I created a sort of a birth certificate with all the data about my son when he was a baby. I included the usual birth date, weight, parents' details and occupations, but also other more unusual things like zodiac sign and mood.

It occurred to me the photos are not very good. I;m sorry about that, I remembered to take the photos on 6am of the morning he gave the heritage book to the teacher...and she hasn't returned it yet :)

In the interest of not boring you too much or having a long blog post I'm going to divide this post into a few parts. Make sure to tune in on Friday for part 2!

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Box of Treasures

Recently I seemed to have gotten in touch with my vintage side. The ephemera, steampunk, metaly side. It all started with a really small metal embellishments collection that was lying in a drawer forgotten. I don't know when or why but I started playing with it and before I knew it I started collecting old screws, hinges and cog wheels. I bought small treasures and jewelry parts in flee markets and soon enough I had a box full of treasures. It was time I made something with them don't you think?

So I took Tim Holtz's Configuration Box and started filling it with my treasures.

I covered the box with the beautiful Sunrise-Sunset collection by Prima and covered all the edges with washi tape. Then I started to have fun!

Have fun creating!
Einat

Spellbinders Upcycled Juice Carton

I'm so excited and honored to be the first designer to kick off the new and inspiring International Flair section in the Spellbinders blog SpellbindersExploreBeyond.com!
To celebrate this new exciting adventure I'll be sharing with you all a great fun tutorial on how to upcycle your milk/juice empty carton.

This project is all about displaying your photos where everyone can see them! The carton will be transformed into a wonderful house frame holder for your memorable photos.

 

 Here's what you'll need to create this project:

Spellbinders Nestabilities – Labels On

Spellbinders Media Mixage – Triangle One Bezels, Triangle One Dies, Ephemera Papers Two

Patterned paper - 7 Dots

Martha Stewart Border Punch

Flowers - Prima, Kaiser Craft

Key Embellishment – K&Company Metal Art

Brad – Recollections

Acrylic Paint – DecoArt – Americana – Buttermilk

Gesso - Ranger

Mask – Prima (bricks)

Brown Ink – Ranger

Resin – Ice Resin

Other – Metal chain, rings and hinges, beads, glitter

1. Prepare the carton: empty it and wash it thoroughly. Let it dry completely before closing the cap.

2. Cover the carton with Gesso (including the plastic cap). Let dry.

3. Paint the carton with acrylic paint of your choice. I used buttermilk. Let dry.

4. Create brick pattern on the carton with the mask and distress ink.

 

 5. Punch strips of patterned paper with a border punch. Adhere on the top diagonal part of the carton to create the roof tiles. Add strips to the front of the roof as decorative trims. Ink the edges. TIP: when you adhere the strips around the cap, mark the place of the cap with a pencil and cut the strip to fit.

 

6. Cut frames with Spellbinders Nestabilities and adhere on all sides of the carton. Combine different colors of paper and different sizes of frames to make it interesting!

 

7. Add metal hinges (I got mine from a DIY store).

 

8. Create metal flags: Cut triangle paper shapes with Spellbinders Media Mixage Dies and insert in compatable

9. Attach rings to bezels and hang the bezels to a metal chain. Ahere the chain and triangles to the carton so they will stay exactly where you want them. I also added a brad to give the illusion that the chain is hanged.

10. Add key embellishment and flowers all around the bottom of carton. 

11. Now all you need to do is cut your photos with the frame dies and adhere them to their place!

 

Have fun creating!

Einat