Tea Stained Doily DIY: Mel’s Monday

So as we creep closer to the big day (38 days until we board our plane to Cabo and 42 days until the actual wedding day- but who’s counting?), sadly my DIY projects are winding down. I’m a little bummed because it’s been so much fun, but since I’ve given myself time to complete them, I’m still calm, cool, and collected and not overly stressesed! Soooo…guess I’ll take that as a good thing. 

I’ve targeted 1 month before the wedding as my “soft” deadline, so by July 1st I want to have everything done. But, since I’m not printing all the table signage or making copies of our CD favors until after July 1st, guess I’m already going to miss my target deadline. Ha! 

This weekend’s DIY project was to tea stain doilies. I’m using large doilies as part of my centerpiece and we surprisingly found the last 3 we’ve been looking for at Jo-Ann’s! I never even thought to look for them there, but while shopping for a few other things my sister stumbled upon them. Woohoo!

The only problem with them- they were stark white. I’m using ivory linens since it is one of my wedding colors, so the white wasn’t going to do. My mom suggested tea staining them to give them a tint of cream or ivory, so the tea staining commenced this weekend!

Here are a few of the white doilies before. In these pictures they actually already look slightly creamy, but that’s just my stupid phone taking not-so great pics. The batteries died in my regular camera so was forced to use my camera phone.

So for these, I just boiled water and let five tea bags steep for about 20 mintues. Then I used a second larger pot (because I didn’t have a large enough bowl) and threw my doilies in and poured the hot tea over the doilies. If you’re going to attempt this- make sure the tea covers the doilies entirely to get the best coverage.

I periodically checked on my doilies until I achieved the tint of color I was going for. Remember doilies will look slightly darker in color when wet and will tone down a little once rinsed and dried. I soaked these for about an hour and a half. For a darkers stain you can soak for 3-5 hours.  But after only an hour and a half, I still think I stained mine a little too long. I’m praying these match the other two I have at my moms house. If not, I’ll be staining three more (if we can find them)!

Once you remove them from soaking, you can rinse them with a little water and vinegar to seal in the color. I skipped this step though. I hung them in the bathtub to let them dry over night. Just hang them somewhere you won’t mind a little tea drips to fall (I just put a towel on the floor). 

And ta-da! Tea stained doilies… 

  So again, BEFORE:

 And AFTER…

 

 What do you think? Have you done this before? Any other tips or tricks you’d like to share?