How to Coffee Dye Papers Your Junk Journals Fun Easy Tutorial The Paper Outpost

Hey everybody! Ready to have some coffee dying paper fun today? I find myself doing this a lot and I thought I'd bring you along for the ride. So basically I just put, I have a very basic simple technique, just some El Cheapo instant coffee. And I pour some into a bowl, highly technical. And here it goes, at least somewhere between half a cup to a cup I like to make it strong. You can make it stronger. I find that using leftover coffee from a drip or a percolator or something like that sometimes doesn't give you the strong enough color. So I put, I'd say that's probably somewhere between half a cup to a cup in here and I'm going to go put some water in. Okay, I added water, I added cold water from the tap. I don't really see a need to heat it. Some people like to use hot water, that's fine. It probably gets the paper to absorb the coffee a little faster, but no big deal. And I may, I'm kind of getting the feeling I might want to even put in a little more coffee because this is a big thing of water. And let me just put in some more coffee. And you can also add coffee crystals as you go to your papers and that gives different techniques and looks like that too. So let's go ahead and do this. I use the, let me just rotate you here a bit. I use the two pan technique. And so first thing I'm going to do, and I usually do pretty big stacks at one time and I'm going to use a stack about that fat. There's my thumb measurement, see it? Okay, so now you can put the water in ahead of time. Actually let me put the water in first. Make sure you have high enough edges on your pan to accommodate the amount of water you have and just give your bowl a few swirls to make sure that all the coffee crystals have been dissolved. And they do dissolve pretty quickly. And you might want to keep a cloth around, hang on, I've got to grab one, it's just out of arm's reach because splashes can occur and you'll find it's very handy to have a little wipe-a-roo with you. So there you go. There's my wipe-a-roo. All right. Now I'm going to pour this in pan number one. Pan number one is the dip and pan number two is the drain and, oh, that's a lot of water. Okay. I was very rambunctious. Okay. Making lots today apparently. All right. And in we go. You can put in one sheet at a time and all that stuff. Or you can toss this in there and go for a walk and come back and it will have soaked up a lot. It's a good idea to allow, oh, yep, did you see that? I don't know if you saw that, but it's everywhere right now. It's completely down the front of my cabinets. Okay. So what you can do is open it up a little bit to allow the paper to get some coffee through it. Okay. See that? And as the paper absorbs, it will pull the coffee and the water in. I'm just going to flip this whole thing over. And this will go down the level. Oh, yep. Did you hear that? Yep. That was, this is why you have that thing handy and trying to do everything one-handed when you're videotaping is always interesting. Okay. So I'm just going to allow some of this to bleed on through, the longer you leave it in here, the darker it can get sometimes. So, but you know, coffee on white paper will show up pretty quickly. So you can give it the squeeze, the squeeze will help get the air bubbles out and it will help the suction that you create afterwards will help pull the coffee in as well. So I am just going to let that sit there for a minute and wipe up my mess. And then I'll be right back. Now we can talk about temperatures on the oven. And I tend to do a bit of a higher temperature because frankly, I just want to get the job done. Cause I do a lot of this, but I'm very attentive to my papers when I'm doing them. I don't. Hello, Holly. I'm in Holly's room right now. So yeah, it could be a little vocal. We'll see. Maybe I'll give them a snack. Hang on. Okay. So I usually put my oven on at around 350 degrees. And that's, I would say at the higher end, a lot of people will do 180, 200, 225. All are fine, but no matter what temperature you put your oven on, I strongly recommend you keep an eye on it because paper can catch fire in your oven. And even though it's an enclosed space, know where your fire extinguisher is just in case. And it has happened to me where I have accidentally overcooked some paper and some paper fell down or the paper curled and touched the elements and it ignited and I, you know, ran around like, you know, a chicken trying to put it out. All was well. There were little black particles of burnt paper everywhere. It seemed like when I opened the oven door, poof, this came out. So always keep an eye on your papers and kind of get into your own rhythm timing as far as how long you want to dry a set of papers before you pull them out. I usually put about seven or so papers in a pile and I have three rows, three racks. So I have probably two piles beside each other and then I have three racks of that. So I try and I put my little kitchen timer on and I push the timer on and I, but I do peak check because sometimes I'll start before the oven is totally hot just to get things moving and yeah, just never take your eyes off the papers. Check them periodically and also make sure you're prepared to take out hot papers. You may need oven gloves, you may need tongs, but I certainly do recommend some kind of eyewear or glassware because it's a steamy thing and when you open a hot oven with steamy things, steam comes out and you can burn your eyes. So it sounds like why on earth would anybody ever even want to attempt this process? It's not that hard once you get your own rhythm, but definitely do not be distracted. Do not be doing other things while you're doing this just for safety reasons. But once you're rolling, it's fun. Okay, so I think that's pretty good. See how these are in the middle. Sometimes I got to open them up a little bit, let some coffee in, but these have soaked pretty well. And obviously the longer you soak your paper, the, I like sometimes when there's a little patch of white here and there, I just think it's kind of cool. The stronger the darkness will be, but you'll find that as you bake them, that will increase darkness as well. Okay. So I'm just going to take a small thing, which I think are about seven pages, I'm guessing here. I just kind of go by thickness at this point and drain it over here. Okay. These are my drain pile actually. Otherwise it takes too long for everything to dry. Yeah. Okay. So now let me move you over here. Hang on. Okay. Here's my oven. Here's my microphone cord. Okay. So it's, it's not that hot yet. It's only at 181, but I'm going to go ahead and start because heat is heat and heat will start drying. So why not get the process going? Hi Holly. Yes. Mother is baking paper yet again. I know. What a weird thing, right? I know it is weird. I agree. But it's kind of weird in a fun way. And yeah, here we go. Putting it in here. Okay. Sticking it in there. You go. Lovely hair today. Okay. This is reality in the crafter's life. What can I say? All right. In you go. And there we go. We'll just close that up. And then I turn on my kitchen timer. I get mine seven minutes. But I do check periodically throughout. So here we go. And we'll just wait and see. I'll, I'll meet you back here in a few minutes. So what I've got in the meantime, while I'm waiting, Oh, my timer's not started. All right. Oh no. Oh, I just turned the whole oven off. Okay. Hang on. Okay. I don't know how to work my, my stove. Okay. Start. Kitchen timer. Seven. Start. I put on seven hours. No wonder it didn't change. Yeah. Make sure you put it on minutes. All right. So what I did is I transferred all the paper from the dipping bucket over to the draining bucket. And I think since I have a lot of coffee water still in there, I'm going to go grab some more paper and put in some more paper to be dyed. Okay. Now I have added the extra paper and it is starting to absorb. Let me just cruise you on over here so you can see that it's a, we're probably about halfway down. So I'm just going to open it up again like I did before and allow some of the coffee to spill over. Yep. Hi Holly. You already ate your snacks, huh? Good man. Yeah. Your belly's not full. What's the matter? So Holly's hanging over on his cage over there and he's a free to walk around the kitchen. Yes. Yes he is. And he's been very busy doing construction in my kitchen. This is a daily job and if I could just harness that power, I could actually get a lot of work done here. But you know, he's an artist and he works when he wants to work and you know, he doesn't ask for much money. He's starving. No, he's not starving. Trust me. He's not starving. He's a very well fed parrot, probably a little too well fed. All right. So sometimes when I get this, my water bath is lower than my papers. I'll do the flipperoo to absorb the squash, getting the bubbles out, followed by some segmented flipperoos just to, you know, kind of mix things up a little bit when we get down to the lower sections here and now through capillary action, the paper is absorbing the coffee, but maybe not as fast as I want it to. That's okay. You can help it in there a little bit. You can do paper by paper and that's fine, but I do it in such bulk. I just, you gotta get her done. You know what I mean? You gotta get her done. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Now we got lots of whites left and I don't mind some whites like I told you. That's okay with me. Okay. And if I see a lot of that, then I will just flip that over and drown it. And I don't care if I tear a page here and there. I call it a casualty. It's just a casualty of my artistry, right? Yep. That's what Holly says when he makes a mess. That just happens when you're doing reckless abandon, mom. All right. Yep. Okay. So the longer I let this sit here, the more it is going to absorb all this stuff. All right, Holly Pants, you are just going to town today, huh? See how it's coming in from the sides? The longer I let it sit, the more it'll do that. And since I'm in no rush because I've got to do all that other stuff, I'm fine. All right. Let me just do a little pause and we shall do a quick check on the papers. Actually, let me just bring you over here. We'll quick check together. We've gone through three minutes already. Let me bring you down so you can see. Okay. So steam, steam comes out. I've got my glasses on and I'm going to use this and I'm testing, okay? They're still kind of damp. It usually takes about seven minutes. Remember, my oven isn't quite as hot. And the grill racks actually make the marks on it, which make it kind of cool. Now the bottom ones are closer to the element, so these papers will actually dry fastest first. And they always come out different on either side. You never know what you're going to get. So these are almost dry. I'm just going to pop that one up there because he's pretty dry. The bottom ones in my oven will dry first. Keep a close eye on those. And this guy, turn him over. He's almost dry. Yeah. I hear you, Holly. Actually, these two are probably dry. I'm going to just pop them over there. And then as the oven heats up more, this whole process starts to happen faster and faster and faster. You got your lovely hair today, huh? Okay. All right. There we go. I've got glasses on my head and in front of my eyes because apparently I'm wearing two pair. All right. Maybe I can do something with the hair there. All right. We'll just give this a few more minutes and see how we do. Okay. We are counting down 19, 18, 17. And now the temperature is only 238, so it's probably going to need a little bit more drying time. But I recommend that you get to know your own oven and decide. I think in the beginning, if you're just doing this, probably check it every two or three minutes until you start to understand how fast your oven dries stuff so you can get a good handle on that. All right. I'm just going to hit another seven minute cycle. But let me go peek in here. All right. What do we have? Okay. There's the steam. We let that waft out, especially at the higher heats, you're going to get more steam. So yeah, a lot of these are almost dry, pretty much dry. Now, you can take them out at the totally crispy dry moment or almost dry. I found both work as long as you're willing to let these set for a bit where you don't use them. But remember, if you pile them up in a pile, that's going to seal in the dampness and it will take them longer to dry. So these guys in here, the crinklies, they're really dry. So I'll put those over there. And these are still sort of wet. So sometimes I just toss them on top, then I go assess the next pile. That's a nice crinklies here. Those are good. They can come out. I will show you. They all come out different. You never know what style or like, see, this is pale on the back, but it's a color on this side. I find that the pigment of whatever you're using tends to gravitate to the bottom. So that one tends to be darker always. I don't know why other than the gravity theory and some of these are done. I can feel it. Cute little white splotch there, kind of nice. And this guy is pretty much dry. And so that's pretty much the process. It's nothing super fancy or technical. It is a lot of bending over and, you know, getting into your oven. But whenever you have a clear deck, I slide another set in there to go. And then I just stay here and I watch it. And yeah, try not to get distracted. Just stay on task. But let me show you some of the Dunsey's. That was my microphone cord. See? Very cool, huh? Yeah. Dunsey's. Yeah. It's very satisfying. It gives the paper a different texture than it was. I use regular multipurpose copy paper, not super stark white or anything because I'm going to be coloring it. So save that for purposes where you need really super white. But this is just a multipurpose paper. And it works really well. I'm very happy with the results. Sometimes you get modeling. We never know why things happen. It's always a mystery. You can, you know, say, how did she do that? We have no idea. Honestly, it just sort of comes out like that. All these little, it probably, the speed at which it dried, drew, it's almost like a water color thing. Hi, Holly, where it causes blooms and the rate of the drying will pull the pigment in certain areas, certain directions. Yeah. So there's another pretty, the bottom ones tend to get the nice grill pattern on them. Kind of cool, huh? Yeah. So that's just some examples. But you can see how different they all come out. Yeah. They do come out different, Holly. I know. And so that's pretty much the fascinating part of this. I don't know what else to add other than, oh, I could show you this. Yeah, let me show you this. This is very fascinating. Let's say, OK, I'm just sitting here bored to tears watching Pam color paper. But maybe you want to grab some crystals. And since the paper is a little bit wet, I've got some white stuff in there. That's OK. But you can put some crystals in here and then maybe turn it over so the water gravitates down to the bottom. And then that will leave some little concentrated areas on your paper. And you'll get a different look. So let's see if we can see some of those. So here's some of those areas where I sprinkled the crystals, and they're starting to spread out a little bit with capillary action as they dissolve. And you'll get some. Yes, Holly. Different techniques. Sorry about the bird squeak. But yeah. So there's a lot of fun things that you can do. Hang on. OK, so I get I bribed him with a sweet pea. We'll see how we will do. And I'll just bring you back over here so you can see the next load coming out. Let's put my glasses. Always put your glasses on a little bit. OK. And OK. So what you're seeing, some of these, I can tell, are more dry. They've got the crinkly sound. They are hot. So be prepared for that. You know, if you need to use gloves or oven mitts or something. Damp on the inside, dry on the outside. So I'll keep the damp ones, and I will stick the dry ones aside. Sometimes they stick to the grill, and I don't worry about that because I can always use this stuff up in scraps, so it's OK. But yes, fun things that you can do with your coffee dying papers, right, Holly? So I'm going to keep this video relatively short, comparatively speaking, just because I'm in Holly's zone, and he likes to make lots of noise. But I would like to show you my other techniques with just how I do my avocado dying and beet juice dying and purple cabbage dying and similar things like that so you can see that process as well. So I'm going to sign off. Everybody have a blast out there today. Make sure you're having lots of fun, and you know, remember that fun can be simple and create with Reckless Abandon, and if you're looking for any of my links for the Etsy shop, the newsletter, the Amazon store, and all my social media links, all down below the video. So have a blast, make some coffee dyed paper, and Reckless Abandon your way through the day. It's really a lot of fun. Take care, folks. Bye-bye.