Quick tutorial on parchments

 Just a tutorial on how to quickly make parchments in 28mm.  You can take or leave steps as suites you. 

Start with some card.  I picked up mine from WH Smiths.  It should be a bit thicker than normal printer paper.  

This is stained and dried using two regular tea bags. This will give a patchy base color.

It is then cut into strips and then small rectangles. 

Card by itself is too thick when looking at it in scale so use some 100 grit sand paper to sand the edges of each sheet down.  The sanded side becomes the back of the parchment. 

If you want distressed parchments then use 60 grit as it will naturally remove bits and make holes. 

When you flip them over they are ready to be worked. 

You can then add a splash of color using colored pencils. 

Then add small lines of text using a mechanical pencil. 

Once that is done then do a thin wash of brown streaked onto the page to simulate wear.  

Then a very thin wash of green to simulate mildew and heavy wear. 

Here are two sheets sat on a sheet of the original card to show the difference. 

Last step is to use a mandrill to round the edges a little bit.  Be sure to ink the reverse side if the edges are going to be visible. 

I have been doing about ten at a time to keep my sanity as my current project needs a fair few.