Aging

Believe it or not, I'm not going to moan about getting older in the post.

The other day I attempted a new project. My mother-in-law's dog happened to get ahold of the sheet music for one of my all-time favorite classical pieces (but will most likely never be able to play) and ate most of it. I decided a while back that I wanted to take a page from it and hang it above the piano, but once I tore out one of the few intact pages, I noticed that it was super white (which is to be expected since I bought it a few years ago). So I decided to make it appear to be aged. Here's how I did it: (original directions from this site)

First I brewed some tea. I used a darjeeling since I have a ton of it (and I wanted to drink some it.) It is supposed to be cold so I let it get to room temperature and then stuck it in the fridge for a couple of hours (meanwhile I made Halloween cards.)

After pre-heating the oven to 200*, I put the music on a cookie sheet and poured a little tea on it. Both sides need to wet, but it takes a lot less tea than you would expect (or maybe it was just me.) I used my hand to make sure all of it was covered. Supposedly you can just rub the edges between your fingers to make them look worn, but that didn't work so well for me. And it didn't really matter, so I gave up pretty quickly. You can make darker spots by sprinkling some instant coffee on it, but since I don't believe in instant coffee, that wasn't an option for me.

Next: Stick it in the oven! The directions said that it should bake for about 6 minutes until dry, but it took 30 for me. Lame. Once it did dried I used a fork to get it off the cookie sheet.

Lastly, I stuck it in a frame and it now resides on top of the piano (I'll hang it eventually.)

Pretty easy and it looks pretty cool.