ANTIQUING PAPER

My Grandsons and I had fun making Christmas decorations by antiquing paper song sheets which we thank;

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for allowing us to print all these wonderful old Christmas Carols. We have aranged them on the mantle. You could also print them out to a smaller size, attach a ribbon to the top and use them for tree ornaments. We so enjoyed making these that it inspired us to have an old fashioned Christmas theme for this year. Many of our decorations are boughs, baneberries, rose hips, gingerbread men and candy canes.

After printing off the size sheets and songs that we wanted we taped the full sheet to the counter.


The boys dipped their paint brushes into a cold cup of coffee and started painting being careful not to be too even. 

 A second or third uneven coat adds to the old and worn look. Careful not to over work the paper as it could cause it to tear.

We used a hair blower to help speed up the drying process in between coats of coffee

We very sparingly coloured small areas of the pictures on the song sheets with fine tipped markers. We used a little yellow on a candle flame or lighted window or a touch of red and green on  holly or a tree.

After gluing our songsheets onto cardboard we used an ink pad to give the edges a used look with first a bit of black followed by a hint of gold. Both colors are applied unevenly. We generally get a medium weight cardboard paper from super markets where they use large sheets of it to separate rolls of T.P. or paper towels set out on pallets. They don't charge for this paper which has many good uses for all kinds of craft projects.

 

 The glued paper tends to curl but flattens out nicely if placed underneath some heavy books for a few hours.

Our final addition is a wedge shape piece of the cardboard glued and taped to the back of each finished song sheet to allow it to stand by itself.