TEABAG ART – COLLAGE FRAGMENTS

It’s been a long while since I spent any quality time in my studio. Before I could do so, I had to have a major tidy-up! Once this was done, the way was clear to work in there again. I have been very busy with the online art course and all of that work has been done from the comfort of my recliner in the sitting room. I have been looking forward to getting ink and glue on my fingers again, though, and with our wedding anniversary coming up, I thought I would make my hubby a mixed media teabag art card.

Selecting materials

After selecting some green tea and peppermint tea teabags for the project, I ironed them in readiness for adding collage. I deliberately chose ones with no interesting stains on them because most of the bag would get covered up anyway.

Time to rummage!

There is nothing more fun than rummaging through my stash for collage materials! I have a lot of polywallets with all kinds of papers and miscellaneous non-paper materials for collage.

This has now expanded to two boxes! There are bags of gel prints, digital prints, greetings card fragments, you name it.

I began by selecting some papers for the first (background) layer.

These papers are mostly from the bag containing scratch papers (papers I have used to clean paint off my brush etc.), failed gel prints, papers for cleaning off stamps and testing stencils and things like that. I also selected a few pieces from my “specialist” papers bag, in this case some crumpled foil from an Easter egg, a single layer of (I think) coffee-stained kitchen paper (very ripped) and some corrugated cardboard. Amongst this lot was this piece:

I tried to rip a piece off, and could not. It was then that I realised that this was a piece of Tyvek which I had painted randomly with acrylics. I cut off a snippet and melted it with my heat tool.

Later I rubbed on a little gilding wax to bring out the texture.

I have a bag of miscellaneous pieces I have made from time to time, sorted by category, for adding to projects as required, including these hearts (I also have shapes and flowers) cut from book pages painted with watercolour and edged with a black Posca pen. The paper is pretty flimsy but that doesn’t matter as they would be glued down onto something more substantial.

In the “specialist” paper wallet, I have a collection of plastic foil wrappers from some chocolates I had once. I couldn’t throw these away as the colours were so glorious, and they are also double-sided. This is a small selection. They are all crumpled and cannot be flattened. The ones on the left have been melted with my heat tool to produce some interesting texture.

This is a selection mostly from the “specialist” papers bag. There is crumpled and ripped tissue stained with ink or coffee (not sure which), another piece of tyvek, painted and heat-shrunk, some plastic mesh stuff, some paper mesh (I love this stuff for collage!) more watercolour-painted book pages and more scratch paper.

Finally, emptying out my scraps bag. There is a lot of material in there! These are small fragments, and even the smallest can be useful in collage, even the most unpromising-looking ones!

Quite often one gets failed gel prints, and also the ragged untidy edges of good gel prints. In their entirety they may look awful, but ripped up and used in collage they are fine. Some of the “failed” papers are the most interesting. Some of the papers are the edge of a piece used to protect a surface when spraying, and there are interesting bits of packaging, like the scalloped edge looking piece bottom left, which was one of those tear-off strips from an Amazon envelope or equivalent. There are also offcuts from digital prints, and papers that I have used to clean off my brayer when doing gel printing. This always produces interesting textures. I love this bag of goodies! Most people would probably chuck it all away but everything has potential in collage, and the more you do, the more scraps you generate.

Planning the layout

I have layered up bits and pieces and put them on top of the teabags in order to decide on the layout for this panel.

Running through them:

Top row:

1st teabag: A piece of scatch paper, overlaid with a scrap of card from which I had punched some small flowers (even the negative spaces are good collage fodder!). The heart on top has no added layer.

2nd teabag: The fragment of melted Tyvek, with gilding wax applied to the raised surfaces (this doesn’t show up well in the photo). Again, nothing further added to the heart.

3rd teabag: Watercolour book page overlaid with a fragment with some stencilling on it, and edged with Distress Ink and black Posca pen. Nothing added to the heart.

Middle row:

1st teabag: Fragment of scrapbooking paper (I hated this paper but it redeems itself in situations like this!) edged with Posca pen, overlaid with a crumpled piece of single-layer kitchen paper (probably coffee stained but it might be ink). I stuck the heart onto some horrible yellow glitter card and fussy-cut around. In this situation the card has redeemed itself! I dulled it a little with some Distress Ink.

2nd teabag: A fragment of corrugated cardboard. I coloured the “valleys” with black Posca pen, and rubbed gilding wax over the “mountains.” I stuck the heart onto some dull gold card (part of an Easter egg box) and fussy-cut around it.

3rd teabag: Brown melted plastic chocolate wrapper with gilding wax added. The heart was stuck down onto a piece of the crumpled gold foil from the Easter egg and trimmed around. The photo doesn’t show the shiny crinkliness of this.

Bottom row:

1st teabag: A fragment of kitchen paper which had been used to mop up ink, overlaid with one of my favourite things! This is a piece of the leaflet from a medication pack. These always come accordion-folded, and without unfolding them, I punch lots of holes in them and then unfold them. If you lay this down flat on another surface and spray it, it not only colours it but acts as a stencil for what is underneath so you get double for your money. Very often the printing on the leaflet will show through, adding more texture. This one is green and gold sprayed. This paper rips easily along the perforations, and even a single strip, ripped along two adjacent rows of holes, looks brilliant in collage. The heart was overlaid on a piece of pink card and fussy cut around.

2nd teabag: A piece of paper mesh lightly sprayed with gold, overlaid with another fragment of painted and melted Tyvek. The heart was stuck down onto some thin gold gift wrapping paper and trimmed around.

3rd teabag: A fragment of failed gel print overlaid with a piece of plastic mesh stuff, painted with gold acrylic (this stuff is incredibly resistant to anything you try to do with it and even the gold paint on it looked a bit dull!). The heart was stuck onto a piece from the edge of a gel print and fussy cut around.

Fixing the collage elements

After deciding how I wanted to layer the collage elements, I stuck them all down. For the final teabag, I added quite a lot of glue to the middle part of the heart and pressed it down well onto the bottom layer, so that the plastic mesh was trapped between the layers. That mesh is very hard to glue down otherwise.

When this was done, I spattered them all with some gold from a spray bottle, using the tube of the spray nozzle.

Creating the teabag substrate

The teabags were all stitched with the sewing machine onto a substrate of scrap 160 gsm printer card which has printing on the back. To hold them in place temporarily, I stuck them down with a dab of glue stick. I used brown sewing thread and a 3-step zig-zag stitch to secure them to the card base.

Inevitably, some of them did move a fraction under the sewing machine foot, leaving quite visible white gaps, but I was able to cover these by painting on a little Tea Dye Distress Ink. I painted this around each teabag and blended it out with more water; it lightened as it dried.

I used the piece to mop up the remaining ink on the glass mat.

The piece was then trimmed down to size, and I used a paper distressing tool to roughen the edges. Using more Tea Dye ink and a soft blending brush, I distressed the edges of the piece.

I further darkened the edges with some Walnut Stain Distress Ink and a blending pad.

Embellishing the teabag substrate

I laid each collage fragment on its respective teabag, and decided how to embellish each one. I used a combination of Tombow Dual Brush Markers, blending them out with water, and fine Posca acrylic markers, and in places, a black Posca marker with a broader tip. On the one at centre bottom, I also used the gold fine-tipped Posca pen.

For the one at bottom right, I tore back some of the paper backing on the collage fragment so that more of the embellished teabag substrate would show. I stuck down three little scraps of gel printed papers – the tall one on the left was an edge piece torn off, and I added black stripes to the large one with a combination of broad and fine black Posca pens.

Fibres for added texture

To add another layer of interest behind some of the collage fragments, I stuck down some bits of various fibres. I bought the burlap roll at a craft show, as far as I remember, and the other two are decorating supplies. The stuff in the bag on the left is a very large sheet of extremely loosely woven cotton fibre when stretched out – this is for cleaning off grout from tiles when tiling. You can pull it apart and get really useful fibres from it. The other one is fine plasterer’s scrim. I also have a roll of plastic mesh which does the same job, and I sometimes use that in various collage projects too.

Sticking down the collage fragments

At last it was time to stick the collage fragments down. You can see the fibres added under several of them. I rubbed some gilding wax on the burlap strip before glueing it down, and used two layers of the plasterer’s shim on the second element. A little bit of frayed and scrunched up grout cleaning cloth went under the central element.

You can see how I altered the fragment at bottom right, to reveal the extra background. There still needs to be some more embellishment on the substrate, after everything is dry.

Here are some close-up shots. I am quite pleased with the photos I took of this stage – for once the gold is showing up quite nicely.

You can clearly see the medication leaflet piece on the bottom left fragment, and the gold on the packaging paper mesh on the centre bottom one – also the gold spots drawn with the gold Posca pen. Even the silver glitter card at left centre is showing up better in these photos! The melted painted Tyvek at top centre and the melted brown chocolate wrapper at middle right, both with added gilding wax, are also showing up a lot better.

All that remained now was to add a few more marks and doodles, and some sequins and beads.

Adding final embellishments

Doodles and outlines with Posca markers, sequins, beads etc. to create a rich effect.

Doodles

Mostly complete at this stage, but I added a few more later, to improve the balance of the design, and just because I could.

Rummage time!

This is the contents of a mixed sequin bag that I have from practically the year dot. Can’t remember where they came from. There are some useful bits and pieces in the bag, but a lot of it is junk and I probably won’t ever use it, but I can’t be bothered to sort through it all and remove the dross! Anyway, who knows – there may be a place for it one day. I have learnt since doing collage that the most unpromising elements can become star of the show!

I did pick out quite a few bits and pieces from that lot, and was pleased with the result.

This is my sequins and beads and goldwork embroidery box. I have had this box probably going on for 50 years! I think it may originally have contained posh chocolates. There is a shallow section at the top, which you can see here, completely filled with baggies of seed beads and bullions, and sequins. (I have another box of larger jewellery beads). There are two drawers underneath, in which I store my metal threads and silks for couching, for my goldwork embroidery.

Here is the panel with the sequins added. I stuck them down with Collall all-purpose glue, and had to go away to let it all dry before I could proceed any further. In one or two places the substrate was so bumpy that I had to add a lot of glue, in order to hold the embellishment, and this is what took the longest to dry.

Tiny beads added.

To attach the beads, I threaded a very fine betweens needle with fine brown thread which I waxed. I pierced a hole from the front where I wanted the needle to come up from behind, to secure the bead and then go back down again; this way I could make the minimum number of holes as there was no trial and error. I came up through the hole, through the bead and back down again through the hole. I managed to extend the thread across the back to the next element, threading it underneath the machine-sewn zig-zag stitching, and when I came to the end, securing it with a knot, and adding a dab of glue to the back at beginning and end, and at all points in between where the thread passed under the zig-zags and where it attached the bead. This ensured that nothing would come undone.

Detail shots

Each individual teabag in turn, showing additional doodling and the attached sequins and beads. Unfortunately, as usual, the camera doesn’t do them justice as they are really shiny and bling-y!

 

In the next picure, I particularly like the little train of purple holograhic stars. To get this effect, I rang a bead of glue across the bottom of the heart element and then sprinkled the stars on top. I shook off any loose ones and rearranged a few. The photo doesn’t do it justice.

A couple of more general shots – first the top half and then the bottom half.

The finished project

To complete the project, I cut a piece of heavy A4 white cardstock to be slightly larger than the panel, and inked the edges with Antique Linen and Tea Stain Distress Inks. I glued the panel down, and the front was done.

I didn’t have any card of sufficient weight in a large enough size, so I cut another piece of the heavy card for the back, trimming it down to match. I stamped the sentiment on the inside and joined the two halves together with a strip of washi tape on the inside. This can easily be removed if my hubby decides he’d like it framed. All that then remained to be done was to make an envelope to fit. I took a large A4 envelope and cut the bottom off and shortened it to fit the card, turning up the bottom to resemble the original. All ready for Friday!