If you've been wondering how other crafters get their tea dyed pages so evenly colored, so flat, and so varied in tone — this tutorial walks through the whole process, including the questions I get asked most often. I cover the dyeing setup, how to use bicarb soda to bring the acidity down, how to get flat paper without ever touching an iron, and how to create texture effects using a plastic doily table runner. I also show results from avocado dye, onion skins, easter egg dye, and coffee splotching, so there's plenty to look at even if you've been tea dyeing for years.
What we cover
The full tea dyeing process from solution to dry stack — including how to manage acidity with bicarb soda and pH strips, how long to leave paper in the solution, how to create partial-submersion and texture effects, and a flip-through of pages dyed by several different methods (tea, coffee, avocado, onion skins, easter egg dye, and green tea).
What you'll learn
How to set up a tea dye solution, including:
- How many tea bags to use depending on how dark you want the result (I use around 12 fresh bags for a standard session, more if I want really grungy pages)
- Reusing tea bags — I cut the strings off the used ones so I know which is which, and each bag gets two sessions before it's done
- Adding coffee directly to the solution to deepen color and shift toward neutral pH
How to neutralize the acidity of tea and coffee solution with bicarb soda — approximately half a teaspoon per two liters of water. Coffee and tea are both quite acidic, and if your papers stay highly acidic, any writing on them can start to disappear ten or twenty years down the track. Bicarb is very alkaline, so a small amount goes a long way toward neutral.
How to test pH with strips from the pharmacy — you're looking for around 7 (neutral). I've done this enough now that I know roughly how much bicarb to add without testing every session, but having the strips on hand at least once is a good way to calibrate your eye.
How to layer papers into the solution for even coverage — I place them in one by one while the solution is still hot, because the first batch is always the darkest. Completely submerging each sheet gives you one consistent tone across the page.
How to achieve the partial-submersion effect — instead of pushing every sheet fully under, I drop some in toward the end without submerging completely. The papers on top press down and soak the ones underneath unevenly, leaving beautiful variation across the page. Every sheet comes out different.
How to create a coffee splotch effect — sprinkle dry coffee grounds onto a wet page, lay another page straight on top, and let it dry. When you peel them apart, you get these irregular spots and marks that look wonderful as accent pages inside a journal.
How to use a plastic doily table runner to imprint texture — lay very soaked pages flat, place the doily directly on top, smooth it down, and leave completely undisturbed until dry. The pattern transfers into the paper as it dries. The depth of the imprint depends on how wet the page was; some come out faint and subtle, some are quite pronounced.
How to get flat paper without ironing — I've never ironed a page in my life. As pages approach dry, I stack them one on top of another. If I want them really flat, I put something heavy on the stack. That's it. No heat required.
What different dye sources produce — the flip-through at the end shows pages dyed with:
- Black tea — warm brown tones, ranging from pale honey to deep grungy brown depending on concentration and soak time
- Green tea — a subtle gray tone that reads almost neutral against white
- Coffee — darker and more yellow-brown, good for deepening a tea solution or adding spots
- Onion skins — a striking yellow; I use both red and yellow skins for different results
- Avocado — soft, muted pink-brown tones
- Easter egg dye — vivid, unexpected colors, completely different look from any of the natural dyes
How to use scrap paper and book pages in the same session — I always include paper that's been written on one side, old book pages, and coloring pages. The slightly heavier coloring-page paper soaks up a lot of color and comes out looking beautifully dark. The scrap paper I fold and use for journaling spots — glue an image on top, and you have a little card with writing space on the back, without using up a full clean sheet.
Tips & gotchas
Bicarb soda dosage matters in both directions. Too little and your papers stay acidic; too much and you've just made the solution overly alkaline instead. Half a teaspoon per two liters is roughly right, but err slightly under rather than over. If you want to be more precise, pH strips from a pharmacy or online are inexpensive and tell you exactly where you sit.
The first batch is always the darkest. I use this deliberately — papers I want deeply saturated go in first, while the solution is strongest and still hot. Later batches come out lighter. It's not a problem; it's actually how I get a range of hues from one session.
Overnight versus two hours makes a visible difference. A page left in the solution overnight will come out significantly darker than one pulled after two hours. I showed both in the flip-through, and the contrast is striking. Neither is wrong — it just depends on what mix of tones you want in your journals.
Wear a glove when handling the hot solution. I put one on before I start placing paper. The water goes in boiling and I only wait ten to fifteen minutes before I start layering sheets.
Don't leave the solution more than three days. It starts to go bad. I work through it over two to three days, constantly pulling dried pages and adding fresh ones, but once the solution is spent or it's been sitting three days, I tip it out.
Separate pages before they're completely dry. If you let stacked pages dry fully while touching each other, they'll stick. I check on batches as they're getting close to dry and separate them then.
For the doily texture effect, do not disturb the paper while it's drying. Lay the soaked pages down, smooth the doily over the top, and walk away. Any movement before the paper is completely dry will blur the imprint. The effect is worth the patience.
The tablecloth trick for drying space. I dry everything on a tablecloth that has a plasticky surface — it stops the tea solution soaking through to the floor, and the slightly textured surface can leave a faint additional imprint on very wet pages, which I actually like. If you're working in a small space, this whole process takes two to three days, and that's just the reality of it. Oven drying is faster, but it's not how I do it.
The variation between batches, between pages, between two hours and twelve hours — that's not inconsistency to fix, that's what makes a handmade journal feel genuinely different from anything printed. Once you have a good stack of pages in different tones and textures, the way they sit together inside a bound book is something no digital tool can replicate. From here, onion skin dyeing and avocado dyeing follow exactly the same logic — different dye source, different color palette, same meditative afternoon with a pan of warm water and a stack of paper.
