Homemade Coffee Dyed Paper

 

I am holding here  34 pages of coffee dyed paper, which will find its' way into one of my up and coming journals. The allure of coffee, or tea, dying paper is that it is much cheaper than purchasing parchment paper if you like that aged look.

Most YouTube video's will teach you to dye one page at a time. I don't. I dye anywhere from 8-15 pages at a time. Drying is a little different than for one sheet at a time, as well. I follow the following steps to make my coffee dyed pages.

I use 20# weight paper. There is a higher risk of tearing the paper at this weight, unless you follow my steps. I pour about 4 cups of cold coffee into a baking pan. I simply eye-ball the amount of pages when I pick them up. I keep them tightly together, and place the stack into the coffee and try to make sure the top of the stack is under coffee and fully submerged. If there is not enough coffee to submerge the paper, then I would spoon the coffee over the top, then turn the paper over so that the stack is equally covered.

Next I place the paper stack onto a baking sheet, and place that into an oven of 150-degrees Fahrenheit. I close the oven door and let this heat up for about 15 minutes. Then I turn the stack over and let it sit for another 15-minutes. At this point, I will check and see how dry the top paper is, and will begin to separate a few of the sheets and check for dryness. I then close the oven door, and check about every 2-3 minutes for dryness, removing the dry sheets as appropriate.

When the sheets are all dry, you are ready to begin using them as desired. 

The darker the coffee, the darker the paper. The longer in the oven, the darker they will become. It's all up to you, and your preferences! It's what makes you happy.

I hope you have enjoyed this little tutorial, and I do hope to have both web cam filming available soon. And I hope to be able to take still shots with my new video cam until I can get a regular camera.

Until our next time, have a pleasant day ya'all! And get out there and craft to your hearts content!