By Contributing Columnist Rhonda aka Raggedyrhondas
Basics of Staining hang tags:
Customers and students alway ask me to give them tips on staining and making things look old. Well, here are a few things starting with hang tags first. Instant coffee or old coffee left over in the coffee pot will work too if its really strong, add it with some molassis and place in a spray bottle, spray your plain hang tags and let them bake on low heat about 200 degrees. Dont leave them alone it doesnt take long. And they will smell good along with looking really old. Now if you want to place an old photo on that tag and dont want it to ruin, you can dip your article into melanta yep, melanta for your stomach, and then let it dry, dont know why but it will preserve the article. Of course now you want your article to look old so in that case, spray it with tea. It gives a different color than coffee and wow it will look great.

To progress along start Antiquing Dolls:
Now old dresses and hats that you want to look old primitive and rustic, dip them in coffee mixture and hang up outside to dry, if you want different areas to look old, use your spray bottle and spray certain areas. Now you can use vegetables, like onions, red onion skins boiled with give you a great red dye to work with and you can also use the vegee dyes to watercolor with. What an interesting thought, now use beets and yes, the yellow ones will give you just that. It is quite interesting looking into dyes used by the indians years and years ago. Like walnuts boiled will give you a dark brown ink sometimes used in writing.

Now if you dye fabric and you want it to be spotty looking, try sprinkling some salt to the top of the fabric while it is wet, it will move the dye around and create wonderful different designs. Different colors can be used from food coloring by mxiing colors and these can be used in water baths for making subtle color changes in fabric.

Until next time when I give updates on new and improved ideas, some from my grandmother that shared with me on fabrics and painting. Catch me next week for a new article. I hope you enjoyed and this will get your creative juices flowing.

Santa Hang Tags pic courtes of DixieCreations

Tags: antiqued, coffee, Dolls, gift tags, hang tags, old, primitive, stained

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