Tea Bag Explorations

It would seem that everyone these days is playing with tea bags and why not?

In our current climate of recycling they are easy and so versatile.

Now I don't drink tea but luckily my partner does

though only 2 cups a day!!!!

Which is hardly enough

So I thought that I would show you

what I have learnt so far about this humble material.

Tea Bag dyed with eucalyptus leaves in a clamp

consisting of 2 coffee tin lids and 2 fold back clamps(bulldog)

 in an iron rich pot

About 10 dyed at once

This is quite a subtle result

Tea Bag dyed as above except I brushed the leaves

with beaten egg white

Tea Bag dyed as above except I brushed the leaves

with beaten egg yol with a little water added

Then the other day I decided I would like to try for much more clarity in the prints

So here I placed baking/silicon paper between the lids and the teabags

and there were only 3 bags in the bundle

I also placed a small piece of open weave cotton cloth with one of the tea bags

This made no discernable marks on the tea bag print but still dyed very nicely

I once again used egg yolk

A tea bag

note I am not using cinerea this time

the silcon paper dyed beautifully as well

perhaps I will try waxed paper next time

for using in encaustic works

as the silicon paper dyed so well

I wondered how well water colour paper

would work to seperate the tea bags

and generate small prints in their own right

I pulled these apart while still wet

Here you can see that the egg stuck to the paper and tore it

I rubbed the paper off the tea bag

but didn't remove it entirely

as I was concerned about damaging the tea bag

And they all look great on the other side

the second lot in the same bundle

I left to dry

well i left it for a while then got impatient

and ironed it dry

This seems to have set the egg

and I had no trouble pulling

this lot apart

And here is the other side.

So there you have it

Naturally dyed tea bags

I look forward to hearing about your own ideas

on how to explore this are even more

For those of you who love the way these look

 but really don't wish to make your own I have

some of my tea bags for sale in my Etsy shop

More to come when my partner drinks more tea.

x te