Thursday, August 16, 2012

Coffee-Tags Tutorial

Hello everyone:)
 It's me, Elin, with some new ideas for you. This week we are playing with brown and can you think of anything more brown than coffee? I find myself using tags for almost all of my projects, but almost everytime I'm about to use one I find it too white for my project. As you all know, the vintage style is all about the "old look", so I figured some coffee would do the trick.
So here's what you need to make coffee-tags at home:
Some sort of plastic container to put everything in, powder coffee (doesn't have to be an expensive one), the tags you want to colour, an old newspaper to spill on and some hot water.
The first thing I do is to fill up the container with hot water and then I sprinkle on some coffee powder. The amount of coffee depends on how deep colour you want on your tags. You can also adjust this with the time you leave the tags in the coffee bath.
Then you put all your tags in the bath; you can colour quite a lot of them at the same time. If they tend to float up, I use a fork or a knife to push them down again.
And now we wait...
I usually leave them over night, but then again it comes down to what colour you are after.
Check them every now and then, and take them out when satisfied.
This is my result when I pull them out. While still wet, I sprinkle some coffee powder over them to get the "stained look". When they are dry, the colour has faded a bit and they don't look this intense anymore.
And here they are, all dried up and ready.
If they are very curly when they have dried, you can pull out your iron and flatten them on high temperature.
Now what's left is the fun part; decorating!
Here are a few simple ideas on how to decorate:
For the tag above I only used stamps. It is the backside of the tags below, which I'll attach to wine bottles for two of my girlfriends ;)
For the front I used the stunning papers from Riddersholm Design: Mill Truck from the Fleamarket Collection and Songbird from the Huntington Garden Collection. The mini tags are from the Fleamarket and Huntington cut out sheets. I stamped my papers with this gorgeus vintage stamp from Inkido, called Carte Postale.
 Other than the papers, I also used heart brads, memo pins, a painted Love Hanger, some Cheese cloth and natural jute fabric.
For my bows, I used Shabby Seam Bindings; these colours are "Sky Blue" and "English Lavender". Combined with the natural Jute Twine, it completed my task for this week :)

Hope you enjoyed my tutorial and got some ideas from this.
With Love


13 comments:

  1. Fantastic tutorial Elin, definitely something on my todo list,
    Hugs, Becky x

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  2. Fab tutorial Elin! the tags look wonderful!
    Love,melly. xxx

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  3. Fab tutorial, Elin!!! I'll have to try it out! The tags are beautiful! Hugs, Elizabeth

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  4. You can also use tea to color your paper as we do in the theater to make paper look old.

    Anastasia xoxo

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  5. These are fabulous and thank you so much for the tutorial must have a go at this big hugs Elaine

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  6. Awesome tutorial Elin! :) And both your tags are gorgeous!
    Thank you for inspiration :)

    Hugs,
    Karita

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  7. It looks fab one question Hun do the tags smell of coffee a lot after just wondered

    Love the look they give just wondered if they smell

    Hugs Wendy

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  8. great tutorial finished effect looks great
    hugs

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  9. Thank you everyone :)
    Wendy: The tags dont smell much coffee, but if you use the same way to color flowers or lace, it will smell a bit more. And as Anastasia says, you can use diferent types of tea to dye with to :)

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  10. I have done tea dye before, but need to do coffee. This great tutorial gives me the inspiration to do it. Beautiful creations too.

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  11. Hi Wow these are stunning definitely going to have a go thank you for the super tutorial ;0)

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  12. Fantástica ideia, gostei, amei a dica. Estava á procurar uma boa ideia, achei, essa é formidavel.

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  13. Did you use watercolor paper tags?

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