How to: Age Paper Without Setting Your House on Fire

Props for tabletop RPGs are fun. I'll probably post a few "How To" articles on some of the props I've made. And to kick that off, I've decided to start with what is probably the easiest to make and most common sort of prop of all... ye olde aged parchment.

Now, if you look online, you'll see plenty of how to videos and DIY guides on tea-staining and flaming the edges of paper to make it look old. And that will certainly work. However, there are some downsides to those two methods. I mean, perhaps you don't really want to lose all your earthly possessions (or just your kitchen, or even a dishtowel or two) in an accidental conflagration. Or maybe you'd like to age paper for more than just a temporary prop, and want it for a piece of artwork, or a scrapbook, let's say... and you'd like it to be acid-free and archival, which rules out using something like tea or coffee for a pigment. Or maybe you'd like to make faux dragonskin, or an infernal document, where the color scheme isn't all browns... but is perhaps blue, or green, or orange and black. If you use paint instead of tea, you can create any color of aged parchment you like.

So with this in mind, I created a video guide to using paint and water to age paper. As with all my how-tos thus far, I'm decidedly verbose (and you could probably skip half of it). Below is the video, followed by a materials list, and a photo of a page made to look like faux blue dragonskin.

Things you will need for this project:

• your project printed on a laser printer
• water 
• acrylic paint 
• a paintbrush 
• paper towels 
• a protective surface for your tabletop 

Optional:

• nice quality "parchment" paper 
• a freebie paint program that allows you to put a gradient around the edge of your text document
• a jpeg of parchment (easily found on Wikimedia Commons)
• tweezers

Faux blue dragonskin, "tipped in" to a pre-existing book just for

demonstration purposes. However a stab or simple sewn binding 

is a reasonably easy option if you do want to craft your own 

spellbook for D&D.