Practical Investigation: Ageing the Diary

'Ageing the diary':

~ For my practical investigation, I decided to look at how we could make the book, that Annie and Raman bought at Shoreditch, look old and more like a diary.

~ I took inspiration from this YouTube video, which was helpful as it explained properly how to use coffee to stain paper and make it look old and more authentic.

~ Firstly I tried the technique on a piece of paper, to see how it would come out and to practise before I did it on the actual book. I thought it worked quite well as I used a combination of 'stroking' and 'dabbing' to create the effect.

Trial run of coffee staining

~ I then tried it on the inside cover of the book and again I thought it was successful.

Inside cover of book.

~ Next, I tried it on a few of the double pages to see if it would work with the ink from the story.

Example of coffee-stained page.

~ On the title page of one of the stories, 'Fear Is The Key', I decided to try and make it look a bit bloody. I used slightly diluted red food colouring and stained both of the corners, I accidentally dripped a bit onto the other page but this gave me the idea to drop a bit onto the word 'fear' and let it run down, creating the dripping blood effect.
~ Unfortunately, when it was drying, the red colour faded slightly, so in future, if I'm going to use this technique, I know not to dilute it as much and also to not put any more coffee/water mixture over the top. Apart from this, if we added more food colouring, I thought it worked quite well and looked quite effective.

Title page, with blood on the corners.

Beginning of story.

~ I also used the coffee technique to stain the rest of the 'outside pages' that would be visible without opening it. I thought it definitely looked a lot older than it did originally and if we do decide to use it for our coursework, then we can work on it a bit more, improving the 'blood' food colouring and coffee-staining more of the pages.

Side of book, showing coffee stains.