Antiquing Your Clues

This paper treatment technique will create a look and feel as though the piece of paper has been water soaked for centuries, and then baked in the sun to dry - great for pirate themed hunts!

"There is another method for aging your paper. As with the above example, you need to make sure that your image is already on your paper. With this method in particular, it is highly recommended that the image be photocopied onto your paper, rather than applied with a pen, marker or other 'wet' medium. Take your paper and crumble it up into a ball as tight as you can. Then, open the paper flat.Now, crumple it up again, creating as many new wrinkles in the paper as possible. Open it up once more. Now, in a small bucket, mix some brownish water using any of a number of things (i.e. acrylic paints, clayish mud, etc.) Make sure that your murky solution is dilute enough or else when you dip your paper into it, your image will not be legible. I have heard of using coffee for this kind of staining, but I have not been able to think of a way to explain why the map or clue would have smelt like coffee. Now, fully immerse the paper in the murky water,squeezing and releasing like a sponge until the water has worked completely into the paper. Finally, lay the paper flat in the sun to dry outside. When it is completely dry, you will find that your clue or map has become water-soaked aged and is quite leathery - a real neat trick."

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