Tea Staining Pages Made Easy

To keep this project cost effective, I choose to use copier paper for my pages. Some artists prefer to use a more absorbent or higher grade paper, but that's not a requirement.

Create a tea bath, using a very strong brew, by filling an 8x11 or 9x13 glass baking dish filled about half full. I've successfully used black tea and chai spiced black tea (these pages turn out particularly fragrant, which is an added bonus during greeting card creation and other projects of that nature).

Place your pages in the bath, remembering that the longer you leave your pages in the darker they'll be after they've dried. The drying process can be done in the oven (with a very careful eye), on a cooling rack (the ones used for cooling baked goods are very handy) or hanging them on a line (some people speed the process with a hair dryer). Creasing your pages during he drying process add interest and texture.

Once your pages are dried, decide if you want the "crinkled" look or if you need them to be completely flat. You can flatted your pages by placing them under a stack of books or some other heavy object for several hours. Before completing this step, be sure your pages are completely dried.

These pages can be used for several different projects. Here are some basic ideas to get you started:

Handmade envelopes: whether you're using these envelopes as an embellishment for a larger project or to send through the mail, the tea staining adds character and interest to your project. You can find templates here and here. Once you've raced and cut your envelopes, rub the edges lightly with Wal-Nut ink before assembling and gluing them together.

Handmade stationary: cut your pages to fit the envelopes you create and embellish according to your theme using rubber stamps and other embellishing techniques. Rub Wal-Nut ink lightly along the edges of your entire project to increase the vintage look.

Tags: embellish tags pieces torn from your pages. If you need a template to trace and cut from card stock, you can find them here.

Bookmarks: embellish bookmarks with pieces torn from your pages. Templates for bookmarks can be found here.

Greeting cards: take a piece of card stock and cut it to fit the envelope you've created. Use the tea stained pages as backgrounds for the front and (or) interior of of your card. Using a darker colored card stock is a really good look for this project.

Scrapbook embellishing: use your tea stained pages to create text boxes, die cuts, backgrounds, and pull-outs for journaling. Rub Wal-Nut ink along the edges of each embellishment for added drama to your layout.

Altered Book embellishing: there are several opportunities for tea stained pages in this project. You could cover over each section you're working on completely, you could add text blocks, you could create fold-away sections. Open yourself for a lot of creativity for this project.

Handmade book pages: create flat or crinkled pages for this project, the choice is yours. Keep them clean or add Wal-Nut ink along the edges. Create your signatures as you normally would and assemble your book.

As you can see, there's a lot of opportunity for creativity with these tea stained pages. What I've outlined are just some very simple ideas for you to use as a way to get yourself started. Don't be afraid to twist these ideas into something more complicated.