Tea Staining

I bought this adorable material at Joann's today.  Thankfully I had a 50% off coupon because it was $16.99/yd and I bought 2.5 yards to use for a tablecloth for my Scentsy booth at the County Fair.

 

I've got more of a vintage/shabby chic/country theme going on and this bright white wasn't going to match and I had heard about tea staining things to give it an older, vintage look so I figured I'd give it a whirl!  I soaked the material in the sink while I worked on the tea mixture.

 

 

I wanted to make sure it was all wet so it would stain evenly.

 

I then boiled a big pot full of water and put in 15 tea bags. 

 

 

I used this tea:

 

 

One blog I read said they used like 50 tea bags so I bought this big ol' package of tea and then other blogs I read used like 4 bags so I figured I'd try 15 and see what happened.

I boiled the tea bags for about 10 minutes, drained the water out of the sink and wrung out the material.  I then dumped the tea into the sink and let the material soak for 15 minutes.

 

 

Everything I read suggested different soaking times so I thought I'd try 15 minutes and see if it was right.  Worse case I could soak it again to darken it up.  Every 5 minutes I turned the material over to make sure it was all getting covered.  After 15 minutes I drained out the tea, rinsed the material in cold water, wrung it out and then hung it to dry in my bathroom.

The color was just what I wanted!!!   

I can't wait to get my booth set up and see everything together!

My husband built me 3 crates out of pallets tonight so I'm going to paint them and then I'll blog about it tomorrow!  :)