Hot take: staining pages with coffee is way harder than the tutorials make it look

I was in my kitchen last Saturday trying to do that coffee-stained page thing for a fantasy novel I'm rebinding. Followed three different youtube guides, used a cheap mass market paperback first. Pages just came out splotchy and some stuck together. Ended up with a weird brown line down the middle of like 50 pages that looks like a dirty watermark lol. had to toss the whole thing. Anyone else mess this up bad? Got a better method for even staining?

2 comments

2 Comments

luna_jackson282d agoMost Upvoted

and then the paper gets all wrinkly and warped too right? like it's not just the color that's off, the whole texture changes. i found out the hard way that you gotta test your coffee strength first because different roasts give you totally different tones. a light roast gave me this weird orangey brown that looked more like tea than aged paper. also discovered that if you let the pages dry flat they warp less than if you hang them up but then they take forever to dry and get musty smelling.

thea_knight1d agoTop Commenter

You let the pages dry flat" is the move. I switched to that method and yeah it takes forever but the smell is way better and they lay flat. The coffee strength thing is real too, I just use whatever's left in the pot from breakfast and hope for the best.