TEABAG ART – BEAUTIFUL STAINING

Over the past few weeks I have been drying various teabags on watercolour paper to create stains. In my box of miscellaneous and scrap watercolour paper I have a small stack of textured, quite thick paper which I have discovered does not behave well with watercolours – the paint seems to absorb into the paper straight away and then becomes impossible to move. The paper has a slightly waxy feel to it and my hubby says it has a glaze on it. I have no idea what this paper is or where it came from. I have discovered, though, that teabags dry on it in a completely different way from normal, and I have been very intrigued with the results.

On regular watercolour paper, the teabags leave a definite, discreet stain. The shapes of these stains are unique in every case, and lend themselves well to added doodling. Here is one of my recent sheets showing this staining.

I think the detail of the stain varies according to how wet the teabag is when you lay it down, and also how crumpled it is. The one second from the bottom on the left, for instance, was probably not so crumpled when it was placed on the paper. I love the unexpected and random results you get from this technique.

Here are some of my old ones with added doodles.

I also experimented with some fruit teabags a couple of years ago, when I was attempting to tea-dye some paper, but on exposure to air over a few hours, the tea turned from a beautiful pink to grey, although the teabags themselves remained slightly pink. The resulting teabag stains were gorgeous, and lent themselves to black ink doodling rather than the sepia which I always use for regular brown stains.

Moving back to my recent experiments, drying the teabags on this peculiar glazed paper resulted in a lot of spread and no pattern, which surprised me a great deal. Here are my first results. This picture shows a teabag drying. You can also see a faint pattern in the centre of each stain where the teabag rested.

I love the crinkly edges, and the fact that they are darker where the spreading has stopped, than towards the centre of the stain. My hubby says this is what sometimes happens with watercolour – this is the dreaded “cauliflower” effect so hated by most watercolour artists, although it can be used deliberately to great effect in certain circumstances.

I turned my first sheet of stains created in this way to a small art piece, creating flowers from the shapes, using my Tombow Dual Brush Markers.

As I progressed with this, I tried drying additional teabags on top of existing dried stains, and I got some fantastic layering effects.

(The flower and butterfly shapes on some of these papers were cut using my electronic cutting machine several years ago – these papers were scraps in my watercolour scraps box.)

Here’s a detail shot. The dark edges of the stains produce an almost 3-D effect.

Here are some further examples. The stains at the bottom have a fractal-like appearance.

This is a green teabag creating a stain on some paper I had done a previous experiment with.

Over the past few months, I have experienced considerable difficulty in sourcing my favouring tea, Lapsang Souchong, which has a wonderful smoky flavour. I have been using Twinings teabags for years and they have suddenly discontinued them. I bought a pack of Taylor’s Lapsang Souchong a few months ago. These teabags were individually wrapped in small pouches, and came with strings attached, which was a bit of a faff when it came to making a pot of tea! (Some photos below.) Teabag tea is generally not as good quality as loose tea, and when I was coming to the end of the Taylor’s teabags, I decided to try and source some loose Lapsang Souchong. I was delighted to discover that my online wholefoods supplier stocks this – it is pretty expensive but it lasts a good long time, and I have now been using this since my last order about six weeks ago. The loose tea has very large leaves which spread a lot when the tea is made.

I wondered if I could get some interesting stains from these by spreading them out on the paper and letting them dry. The result was a bit disappointing – I think they dried out too quickly, but they left quite an interesting texture on the paper, as you can see in the above photo. For a bit of added textural background, I think I shall probably do this again. It’s interesting that the speckled effect is still visible through the overlying teabag stains.

Since those photos were taken, I have continued to add layers to the various stains and the results are fantastic.

Here are some close-up shots. I think the first one is my favourite with its multiple layers.

The final one is interesting. Drying a teabag in the centre in order to add more patterning, it seems that the sealed edges of the teabag have made an impression, with a series of straight parallel lines. I’ve never had this happen before.

I don’t think I need to add any more staining layers to these. As for embellishing them, I need to think about that – and also, how I am going to use them.

Emptying the teabags

That is not the end of the story. Once the teabags are merely damp and no longer producing stains, they can be removed and left to dry completely. I then empty them and they can be used in projects. The regular British teabags are normally flat almost-square rectangles, sealed on all four sides, which means that you can’t open them out to get a decent sized piece of teabag material. The Taylor’s ones seem to be folded at the bottom, and I may be able to open these out, either by pulling the seams apart or cutting them off, resulting in a double-sized area of materal. My fruit teabags (not the ones which went grey, a couple of years ago) are in the US style, folded and stitched, with a string attached. The string is either stitched or stapled with these bags, and once removed, the bag can be unfolded and the centre seam gently pulled apart to produce a nice big rectangular piece. The material is also more papery and translucent than the fabric-like British style ones. All of them are resilient enough for art, though.

I use green tea in my daily rehydration drink so generate a teabag every day. These are the regular British style bags. My hubby likes peppermint tea and these are normally the same, but recently there was a batch with a centre seam, and I was able to take these apart and unfold them to produce larger pieces. These seams, when pulled apart, tore a bit, but they have left a nice “deckle” edge which will be great for collage.

Here is a box of a selection of the teabags after I had emptied out the tea, seen in the blue bowl below. Surprising just how much tea is generated!

Top left are the opened-up teabags from my fruit tea, together with the individual pouches they came in. You can see the strings and tags below them. On top of those is a selection of the green teabags, regular British style. You can see the little slit along the seam where I have cut the bag to extract the tea. Top right: the Taylor’s Lapsang Souchong teabags with their strings still attached, and their pouches. I shall remove the strings when I determine whether I can open them out flat. I may leave some with strings attached for inserting in albums and other projects. Bottom right – surprisingly dark, are the peppermint teabags (regular British style).

You can really see the variation in colour between the various teabags in these pictures. However, in my later photos (see below), this colour difference is not so noticeable – it may have been due to the lighting. The main emphasis on those pictures, though, is the pattern of the staining.

Taylor’s Lapsang Souchong teabags with tags and pouches. I was very careful when opening the pouches to make the tea, cutting the tops off rather than tearing them, so that I would not damage them. They may be useful in album projects.

I did not use these bags for staining watercolour paper.

Fruit teabags and green teabags. I scraped off as much tea residue as I could from the fruit teabags but what remains adds interesting texture. You can clearly see the difference in the materials between these two types of teabags.

Gorgeous stains

These teabags have all been used to stain watercolour paper. The side which was in contact with the paper tends to have much less staining, which is hardly surprising as most of it has been absorbed by the paper.

On the right in the box, you can see the few peppermint teabags that had a central seam which I was able to open up. You can also see the very fine surgical scissors I used to slit open the bags to empty out the tea.

A selection of green and peppermint teabags – unfortunately the photo doesn’t show them as green as they are in real life. You can clearly see the “deckle” edge of the peppermint teabags on the right.

Fabulous staining.

Finally, some of the green teabags, also showing some gorgeous staining.

Once these teabags are ironed, I can stamp on them, or paint, or stencil… If left intact, I can insert stuff inside, for instance fragments of book pages, as I did with these ephemera pieces a while back, adding machine stitching and sticking small images on top.

Here is another example of how I treated teabags differently, in a “sampler” page in my Organic Journal.

Watch this space to see how I use my recent batch of teabag stains, and stained teabags. They make gorgeous art materials!