I wanted to test out tea staining and putting tea stained paper through our printer and it went well. I lined a cookie sheet with aluminum foil with the edges of the aluminum foil pointed up so it created a sort of bowl. Then put the sheet of paper in the cookie sheet and gently poured tea over it until it was completely covered. I left it for about an hour. Then poured the tea out and let the paper dry naturally.
I did this with a blank sheet that I then ran through the printer. And I also printed out a page and soaked that in the tea. They both worked well. I didn't have any of the ink run on the second one either, which was what I was worried about.
Here are the pictures front and back. The one on the left is the one that was stained and then printed on top of. And the one on the right is printed and then stained.
The little white spots seem to have come from bubbles that got caught under the page while staining. If I had put the printed page face down in the stain instead of face up I would have gotten those on the front of the page too. I really kind of like them. Also with the one on the left it seems that it was flattened a little more from going through the printer. Where as the one stained after printing got some ruffling to the edges.
Which do y'all think looks best?
I am going to do some more experiments to see what I can do. My next experiment will involve purple water and some lavender oil.
I personally like the one on the left. I'm actually kinda scared to tea stain my existing pages because I wrote them by hand and hand-drew some. I'm afraid the ink will run as soon as it gets wet.
I'd say write a practice sheet and give it a try. I am planning to try out some staining with the different ink types I like to use. No need to experiment on the finished pieces.
If your writings and drawings are done in pencil or with an ink pen, the ink is oil-based and will not run. If you did drawings or paintings with a type of watercolor or water based ink, of course those will run. I did something very similar to about 100 pages and they turned out fantastic. I did dry mine in the oven at 200° so that I would get the wrinkles in it and give it a more aged look. The only downside was that sometimes my printer did not agree with the wrinkles on the lead edge of the sheet when I tried to pick it up to print it. The printing that did successfully print came out fantastic! Good luck and enjoy.
Also note that I used a spoon to smooth out the bubbles to get a more even staining and still had imperfections that were more paper related and "chunky" tea spots. Still wonderful look!
I love the richer color on the left but the imperfections on the right are so prettyy
Thank you. I think I left the left one in the tea longer.
These came out nice. I love tea stained pages for my grimoire.
i deeply love this! you've inspired me to coffee stain my pages