Teabag Mini-Albums
Yesterday I continued working on the teabag mini-albums, beginning with one of the small ones – I’ve decided to make two rather than one with the backgrounds that I have made.
I was in a bit of a quandry what to do with these very small pages, because once I’d done the inked backgrounds on them, it seemed a shame to cover them entirely with teabags. In the end I decided with some of the pages to glue the teabag down along the top or on one side, so that they could be lifted up.
My first attempt during this session at doodling one of the bleached teabags with the double spiral ended up in the bin. I overworked it and it didn’t look right, and then some water seeped through from the next page and made the ink run and the whole thing was a horrible mess. I pulled it off and did another teabag. This time I kept the design ultra-simple, just outlining the bleached shape. I decided to keep the doodles as simple as possible from then on, for this project – less is sometimes more! I outlined this one with one of my Staedtler fineliners. The bottom part of the page shows the inked background.
Lifting up the teabag, the whole background is revealed.
There will be two folded sheets (4 pages) in each of the two signatures for the book. Nothing is sewn together yet – this is just a mock-up for now. Pages 2 and 3 are shown in the next photo. The teabag on page 2 is stuck down on all four sides, and the one on page 3 is attached only along the left-hand edge so that it can be lifted up as before.
The background paper for pages 1 and 2 is thinner than the other pages, and has some vintage printing on it on page 2. The middle part of that particular piece wasn’t so interesting so I just left the top and bottom exposed, with a suggestion of text. The teabag was from my original bleached set – these are all quite yellow – as far as I remember I added some distress ink to most of them at that time. I outlined the shape again, adding a few dots and no other embellishment to speak of. I think the shape speaks for itself – it was done with one of my Indian wood printing blocks.
Page 3 has a very simple doodle on one of my latest bleached teabags – again outlining the shape, this time with a sketchy line, and adding a few random stars. I stuck it down on the lower part of the page because the background seemed right for a starry night. Again, the teabag is stuck down along one side only, and can be lifted up. I rather like how the bleaching and outlining has come out in a ghosting sort of way on the back.
Pages 4 and 5 are the centrefold for the first signature. I stuck down another of the wood-block teabags from the first bleached batch, again outlining the shape, following all the imperfections. I enhanced the yellow with Tombow Dual Brush markers, and continued the curve of the design onto page 5, as the shapes generated in the background lent themselves to circles and swirls. I added some more Speckled Egg Distress Oxide ink to both pages. You can see that the teabag is set at a slight angle, to make the curves look right. I really like how this page came out.
For page 6, I used one of my cut-out doodled teabag stains, because I didn’t want to obscure too much of the background which I really liked. I needed to tone down the doodle a bit and added some Speckled Egg Distress Oxide ink at the top and on the right, and some Pumice Stone Distress Ink on the other side, using blending brushes. This blended the motif into the background a bit more, and also had the effect of toning down the inked detail so that it was more subtle.
Page 7 is the other half of the thin paper with the text on it. This time I wanted more of the text to be exposed, so I took one of the original bleached teabags and cut out the stamped design. I outlined the pattern with its many imperfections (this was a far from perfect print, but none the worse for that!) and arranged it so that the maximum amount of text should be shown. This paper is quite yellow so this particular teabag was a good choice for it.
Pages 8 and 9 complete the amount of work I was able to do in this session. Page 8 was a straight sticking down of the teabag on all four sides – this is one of the recent bleached ones – the only embellishment apart from the outline was the addition of some dots. All done witih a sepia pen.
I loved the background of page 9 so decided not to stick anything onto it, but just to use the shapes generated by the ink to add some minimal doodling, and some outlines. This was done with a grey fineliner from the Staedtler set. I really love this page with the subtle colours, especially of my favourite Speckled Egg Distress Oxide, and the tiny touches of yellow in it.
Only 3 more pages to do and the book will be complete, apart from binding it into a cover, which so far I have made no decisions about. I really like how it is coming together with the grungey look and subtle colours. I have been watching some YouTube videos on how to stitch the signatures together and need to decide on the method for attaching them to the cover.
Surveying my studio at the end of this particular session, I have come to the conclusion that I am NOT a tidy worker…
Doodles on teabag stains
In the evening I did some more doodles on my teabag stains. I really love doing this! The shapes the teabags make on the watercolour paper are so random and interesting, and being so small, each one takes very little time to do, and I just follow the shapes and add whatever doodles come to mind. (My Brazilian friend can see all sorts of monsters and things in these little images, but I can assure you that they are purely abstract!! She reminds me of my hubby, who can see all sorts of pictures in the swirls in the custard on top of our pudding! It’s a running joke at mealtimes.)
You can see where I have cut out some that I’ve already done, and on the ones at the top not yet done, I have outlined the shapes of the stains with a fine sepia archival pen.
Here’s a closer shot to see the detail.
I think I can safely say that I invented this particular little art form. I’ve never come across anyone else who dries teabags on watercolour paper and then doodles on them. I discovered it by accident – dumping out some teabags onto some paper and coming back later to discover the lovely stains they had left. Scrunching them up gives these more rounded shapes, and if you lay them flat (with a few wrinkles if possible) they come out with a more rectangular shape with more area of colour contact on the paper, allowing bigger doodles or Zentangles, as I did on this original set several years ago.
This is a card I made for someone back in 2014.
In this case I had a plan in mind, and chose a particular teabag stain to do some Zentangle on. I made a little picture called “Devon Hills.” The county of Devon, where we live in the UK, is characterised by a variety of landscapes – gently rolling hills, moorland, farmland, wooded valleys and rivers, and the coast. It is also the second wettest county in the country so we get plenty of variety in the weather, too. I happen to think it is the most beautiful county in England, but then I am biased!
