Vintage is an authentic form of art. If it is flat enough to fit between the glass and the backing board of a picture frame, then it is art. Colours are just for visual amusement and emotional appeal. Even black and white is art; it’s called monochrome. A printed poem can be art, and you can decorate it using stamps in the corners, motifs, borders, shapes, and the like.
To create a more authentic vintage collection, perhaps without having vintage items to hand, there are techniques you can use to make your paper look aged.
3 ways to make your paper look aged
1. Tea brew dye
The simplest method of giving a vintage look to paper is to tea stain it. This can be done in one of two ways. Both require tea bags, and that’s much cheaper than buying vintage paper to use in your craft projects.
The first way is to make a cup of black tea, and then use a paintbrush to stain the paper. The other, and easier way is to make the brew in a basin with a few tea bags and then lay the sheet flat in the basin. Leave it there for up to 30 minutes, remove it carefully as it will be brittle, then lay it flat on a sheet of kitchen towel to dry. Once dry, it can be used to draw on, write on, doodle, or run it through your home printer. There are marketplaces with collections of vintage materials from hymns to hieroglyphics.
If you find your sheet of paper has dried with raised or curled edges, use a heavy book or two to weigh it down and leave it until it’s flattened.
2. Tear the edges of the sheet of paper
To some, paper with torn edges can convey images from scenes of pirate movies of the treasure map having torn edges. Another time the torn edges are handy is to create the illusion of an ancient scroll where the paper would be rolled out to unravel the text contained on the paper. Tears and creases were authentic for this type of medium.
If you really want to go old-school and conjure a manuscript or authentic sheet of music, be it modern-day music or a vintage hymn sheet, create a scroll effect by tearing the edges of paper and dying it.
3. Crinkle the paper
Creased paper is not for everyone. In fact, people spend good money on photo restoration services to get wrinkles out of photographs – and to repair the ink damage when it happens. For prints of non-sentimental items though, the aged and wrinkled look of the paper may be just what your project calls for.
Use this technique in tandem with the tea brew dye process and you’ll have crinkled paper with a vintage appearance. The trick to pulling it off is to dye the paper first, then crunch it up. Otherwise, you’d have dyed paper with white streaks showing through. Dye the paper first, then crinkle it.
Vintage collections of various items are terrific for multi-photo frames. The fact that everything inside the frame is old, or looks old at least, makes that the theme. Within the display can be anything that looks aged.