TEABAG STAINS – AN UNEXPECTED RESULT

My second post today.

From previous blog posts, you will know that I often dry used teabags on watercolour paper, where they leave gorgeous stains that you can then doodle on. I’ve got a box of pieces of watercolour paper (some of them reject paintings of my hubby’s) and some smallish scraps too. I have no idea what weight or quality they are.

My hubby has started drinking peppermint tea and the bags leave really strong stains, which is fairly surprising for a herb tea. I recently started a new sheet to dry them on and it was quite unlike anything I’d used before – this small scrap was more like blotting paper and the tea stain spread and spread outwards! As I removed dried bags and added more, these stains overlapped. The edges are so crinkly and dark, and almost look burned. Fascinating!

Here’s the sheet – work in progress, with a teabag drying.

You can just make out the pattern left by the scrunched up wet teabag in the centre of each stain.

This is the completed sheet. I deliberately didn’t fill it completely because I already had a plan what to do with it. The darkest one is dark because it’s still wet.

The reverse side is interesting too – the tea stains have bled right through (I always put a plastic sheet underneath for this process so that it doesn’t cause any staining where I don’t want it). The result isn’t quite so strong as the front surface.

A couple of close-ups.

I created an arrangement of tattered flowers from these shapes, adding marks and shading with Tombow Dual Brush Markers (water-based). This is the first layer. You can see that as the ink dried, it has spread quite a bit.

I went back with another pass to refine the detail.

Close-ups.

I love how these have turned out! The paper is very buckled and wrinkled from all the moisture but it should flatten out if I give it the heavy book treatment for a few days.

With teabag stain art, you never quite know what you are going to get! I’m super-thrilled with how this turned out.