Tutorial - How to Tea / Coffee Stain

Good Morning all! 

Today I am sharing a tutorial with you and 
The Crafty Pad Challenge Blog
 on how to tea / coffee stain. 


I use this technique on a daily basis while playing in my craft room and it has saved me a good few pennies.  Hop you enjoy it :)) 




How to Tea / Coffee Stain

This is a really frugal way to change the color of ribbon, lace, fabric and even paper to give it a beautiful vintage / distressed look.   Any light color will suffice, it does not have to be white, even yellow, light green, light blue to light pink can be stained to a tea / coffee look.

Tea staining majority of the time will always give a lighter result than coffee staining.  If you tea stain an item but would like to give it a touch of some highlights coffee staining is the perfect partnership to use.

Materials

Ribbon / lace / fabric / paper  

Teabag(s) (I find that the home brand does not give as good a result)

Coffee – the cheaper and nastier I find gives the better result

Paper towel

Teaspoon

The how to for Tea Staining – (I am going to use a ribbon for this tutorial)

1. First things first, put the kettle on and make yourself a nice cup of tea.  If you like milk take out the teabag before you add it :)

2. Place the teabag aside and allow your teabag to cool.

3. Once your teabag is cool enough for you to pick up, take the teabag and begin dabbing it onto your ribbon.  Depending on the size of your ribbon, you may need more teabags. 

4. To reach a darker stain, allow the ribbon to dry and repeat until the desired color depth is reached.

5. Allow the ribbon to dry.  Or if you are impatient like me, get out your heat embossing gun or iron and dry the ribbon.

6. Your ribbon is now stained and ready to use!  

Handy frugal tip – I know a teabag is only like 5 cents but 5 cents is still 5 cents, so, if you are going to be using a few teabags but cannot drink all that tea, place the tea liquid mix into a bottle and if you have some patience and a few days to wait, add your ribbon ect to the bottle and it will stain over the time it sits until you remove it.  As this is one of the most common ribbons I use in my crafting, when I see cheap light colored ribbon on sale I usually by a few rolls of it, take one of them off the roll and add it to a tea mix in a bottle till I am ready to use it.  The longer the ribbon sits in the tea, the darker the stain is. This method is not suitable for paper though.

The how to for Coffee Staining – I am going to use the same ribbon from above, but am going to add some highlights to the ribbon to give is a very distressed/vintage look.

1. Take some paper towel and fold in half and then in half again, making a small square.

2. Take a teaspoon of coffee and place it in the middle of the square.

3. Roll the paper towel up around the coffee in the middle like a little plum pudding.

4. Add a touch of warm water to the coffee filled section of the paper towel, enough to wet it and get some of the coffee dissolving and showing through the paper towel.

5. Take your coffee teabag and dab it onto your ribbon till you reach the desired color result you want. 

6. To reach a darker stain, allow the ribbon to dry and repeat until the desired color depth is reached.

7. Allow the ribbon to dry.  Or if you are impatient like me, get out your heat embossing gun or iron and dry the ribbon.

8. Your ribbon is now ready to use!  

You can wash your ribbon / lace / fabric with no washing powder and the stain should still hold somewhat, but will be lighter.  I find the coffee smell goes away after a few hours and there is usually only a hint of it left, and I don’t mind the slight coffee smell to my cards. 

To see the finished effect on a card; here is a sample of the ribbon we stained above used on this gorgeous card I made using one of The Craft Pad Designs digital images called Sentiments/Quotes.  (There are 7 beautiful sentiments/quotes/verses in this set and they are perfect for all occasions.) 

If you liked this tutorial, please do drop past
The Crafty Pad Challenge Blog 
and check out all the other amazing tutorials too! 

Happy crafting friends

Leesa aka The Navy Wife