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Timelines

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This did not meet my expectations.

I wanted to try something that end with cropping but had an actual border, and since you're working with "aged parchment" burning the edges is a good "aging" method.

In reality, burning the edges is a tremendous pain that doesn't really yield particularly good results. Here's how it looked before taking the lighter to it: [link] along with a hint (of sorts, maybe) about the translation. This is not the tea-brushed paper I'd been showing on my Twitter/TwitPic feed, but the soy sauce one. Between the two, I think I like the soy sauce better in terms of the "staining" effect. The tea is good if you want a nice uniform color, but the sauce definitely gives it a more "weathered" quality, like it hasn't been sitting on a shelf for untold years but actually been a few places. I've heard of people using cola, but someone had warned that the sugar can make the paper sticky. I thought about trying it anyway, but if I did, I think I'd skip the edge-burning on account of dry sugar's flammable properties.

I think in the future, I'm just going to stick to tearing the edges of the paper. If I want to go for the burnt edge, I found just brushing a soy sauce-soaked sponge around the edge yielded a rather effective result (as I did here when I wasn't happy with the burning). If I used black ink roughly brushed along the torn edge, it would probably look exactly the same.

I barely even want to tell you about the hassle of burning the edges; it started in my shower stall (I figured that was the safest place to do this) but after one corner filed the place with smoke, I feared setting off the smoke detectors, so I moved the operation outside (where it's 29 degrees). Of all the issues and problems to deal with, the wind was the most uncooperative. I should have taken a damp sponge with me to wet down the edges, but I was stupid and didn't. Luckily, nothing burned down or caught fire besides the paper. In short, BE CAREFUL IF YOU WANT TO DO THIS. My advice, like I said before, is don't, just tear the edges, and paint roughly with black ink. Likewise, if you want the sooty look (achieved in places by holding the paper up and putting the lighter under it), just rub dirt or charcoal on it; it looks exactly the same.

Lastly, here's two good resources from IndyMogul:
Where I'd heard about using cola: [link]
Where I'd heard about using soy sauce: [link]
Image size
1519x2388px 6.75 MB
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onirophase's avatar
Very very nice !