Making Aged Walls with sheets & Aging Curtains

**Atelier*Motives** · 09-07-2011,05:11 PM

I didn't see a thread up of this yet so I figured I'd share. Back in 2009 we set up our carport as a haunted child's room. The walls were sheets that I dyed and painted, then hung in the carport. This year I'm doing a funeral home and need to add two new wall panels for the front windows of our house.

It's an easy project and definately something that can be finished in less than a weekend. I picked up two sheets from the thrift store (you can also raid the linen closet, I did that last time, Lol).

I used the RIT dye you can get from the craft store. Grabbed some distilled vinegar, and salt. With the RIT you can dye the sheets in the washer, a pot, the sink or a bucket. I prefer using a bucket so I don't damage anything we have...or ruin the next load of laundry I do. :/ Make sure you have some good gloves and a stir stick.

I poured boiling water into the bucket, about a TBSP. of salt, and 1/4 cup of vinegar. I also poured some old coffee grounds in the bucket too. Take one of the sheets and submerge in the bucket, stirring it around and making sure it's soaked through. Don't worry too much about trying to make sure the sheets soak the dye evenly. You're going to want to have them unevenly colored and faded in spots.

The longer they soak the darker the colors. I took mine out after a couple minutes. And instead of rinsing them out in the sink, I hung them on our fence and let the tropical storm rinse them for me. They got some really nice faded spots (where the sheet was on the top of the fence). Since it was still raining I brought them in and draped them in the garage to dry. Since the weather was nice yesterday I stretched the sheets out and weighted them down on the driveway. I used a stencil from the craft store and painted rows of the stencil. This is another thing that doesn't need to be perfect. Some bits were lighter and uneven, and some of the lines were a little off, but it kinda adds to the creepiness.

Once the paint is dried, I went back over in spots with glow in the dark paint. And then did some paint splatters with the glow paint too. Under black light, the spots in the sheets will glow faintly, and the uneven shades in the sheets will be pretty noticable.

With the curtain that will be up in front of our large window (where the coffin will be), I tea stained some old frilly curtains I picked up from Goodwill.

I took a large pot boiled about 4 teabags, after it's boiling turn it down to simmer. Take your curtain or fabric and stick it in the pot. I added some used coffee grounds for some darker spots on it. Use BBQ tongs to stir the fabric around.

After the fabric has been soaking for a bit, take the curtains out ringing them out in the process. Rinse off the coffee grounds and rinse the curtains in cold water. I hung mine to dry in the shower. If you scored some good fabric the tea staining will come out uneven with some good dark spots. Keep in mind depending on what kind of material you use the results will vary.

Thank You for looking!!!