Sunday, April 24, 2016

1239 - "Chang's Laundromat"

I wanted a laundry ticket prop, and I was for reasons of my own imagining that Lawrence of Arabia had his clothes cleaned at the only Chinese laundry in Arabia.  Culture clash!  Admittedly, it's a little politically uncorrect.  I blame growing up with the Calgon commercials.  
 
 
Above is the finished product.  I designed and printed it off using Photoshop and decided to age the paper by soaking it in tea.  I made a pot of dark tea and poured some in a dish.  After making sure the ink on the print-out was dry, I set the receipt in the tea until the paper turned a nice sepia brown, maybe a minute in the drink, flipping it so that both sides of the page were coated.   I should have taken more care to make sure the soaking was even, since you can see on the bottom that the dye is uneven.  That does not bother me. I removed the prop from the tea and put it on another plate to dry.  This plate I stored in the oven at its lowest heat: 250ºF.  I let the sheet dry for ten minutes, by which time the paper was dry and crisp to the touch, although not hot or burned.  I softened the paper by violently waving it around several times in random directions.  My big regret is that the laser printer ink looks way too modern, but maybe an inkjet or better still an offset press print would look more natural.
 
 Below is the Photoshop file I made, so you can see the detail.  It represents an un-aged product: