I have a small draw string bag, I need it to look very old, any ideas would be great, Thanks Dave

Dave… Over in the Spooky, the Mysterious and the Bizarre, I remember reading about someone who aged a bag they made by taking sandpaper to it and burying it in the dirt. I have found many good tips over there to age things.

Good luck and let us know what you do,
Bruce

Thanks Bruce, I will cruise over there now, I thought about leaving it outside for a while, but something a little faster, so thanks again.

Dave… Perhaps staining it with tea or coffee, I have aged many of my dress shirts by spilling.

Bruce

Weathering anything is going to need some thought on how something would age naturally. What areas would show wear, or dirt from repeated handling, or considerable abandonment?

Look for links to weathering for modelers (railroads, etc.) Those guys are experts.

Those are two really great ideas, the coffee and tea is perfect, then a carefully placed tear on the fabric, yes,

Sanding and wire brushing are always good ways to replicate distressed material.

This reminds me of one of my departed pals, faux finisher Mark Dyer, who in his younger days worked for "Cuz's Antiques" in Lebanon, TN. Mark was an "ageing" specialist. I don't know firsthand but Mark told me that Cuz would buy those old (really new) bank reproductions and Mark would take them, beat them up a little, and then bury them in the ground for anywhere from a month to a year. Cuz would then sell them as real antiques. Mark said he would do a hundred at a time.

A note: Cuz gradually bought up all the all the antique stores on the town square.

http://www.cuzsantiques.com/

He and his sons would sit at a big table in the main Cuz store and polish pocket knives waiting for their customers to walk in. It's a big antiques stop for tourists. There's even a corn bred looking statue of a confederate general in the town square. It's probably not even real.

R.I.P. Mark. Thanks for telling me your stories.

I did a little Google investigating, and it turns out that Cuz and BCS, are right on target, by placing it in the ground, many things happen and fast too, depending on the material, wood, metal etc.
this process, has the dirt work it's way deep into the material, and there are chemical reactions that take place, then you have insects, they will eat away at some, or there droppings will take some action of their own, so that’s the way to go, also with wood and metal, some say to beat it with a chain or mallet.
The Coffee and Tea idea also came up several times, but no article had them used together.

I would also sloppily fold the bag and leave it under some flood lights or in the sunlight for a couple of days to get a mottled sun-faded look to the fabric

Dave, another thing about burying in dirt is the decompostion process by bacteria and microbes. These little buggers are the key to unlocking the miracles of life in soil, breaking down dead material, turning it into compost. Certain materials will biodegrade if not kept in check. Interesting.

Very interesting and pretty cool, I buried 4 things the other day, lets see what comes up.

Dave... I hope that you share pictures when you are done.

Thanks,
Bruce

Crap, pictures, I should have taken before I buried them, another great idea,

Motion picture costumers use various shades of spray paint, even streaks and tips to age fabric to the proper hue. If you use spray paint, b4 it sets, sprinkle powdered colored chalk onto the fabric for the desired effect.

Beggars at some renfairs I know will tie their garb to the back of their car and go for a drive.

Michael was right on the button.

Going by your original post, you want to make the bag look "old." But "old" and "dirty" are two different things, which could go together or not. You can have something extremely old which is still relatively clean (think of Egyptian artifacts inside a museum case) or something new that's very dirty (a football player's uniform after a game in the rain). Or, you can have something that's old and dirty.

It's a matter of choice, so how you age it really depends on what the effect is that you want to create and "how old" the piece is supposed to be.

I generally use a natural sponge and a couple of colors of acrylic paint...one that's darker and one that's lighter than the bag's actual color. Dip the sponge in the paint, dab it against a scrap cloth until it's almost all gone, then use it on the item. It's "aged," but maintains the strength of...um...youth.

-Philip