Tea Bag Paper Technique (from Art Journalling Magazine) Part 1

This was a technique that I sourced from the current Art Journalling magazing, it is truly awesome and upscales a normal every day piece of rubbish into a wonderful piece of vintage paper for card making, art journalling or mixed media.

 

To make the final piece of paper you will require around 20 used tea bags pressed flat after used and dried, this can be sped up slightly if you place them on top of a warm radiator.

 

Once you have the dried tea bags open one end and remove the dried tea leaves.

 Then cut open the two side seams and open to create a rectangle removing any lingering tea.

 

Place the first tea bag on to a non stick craft sheet (although the article did also suggest that wax paper would have the same effect as the craft sheet), overlap the second tea bag with the first and put a layer of soft gel medium over the top continue with the remaining 8 tea bags making the piece of paper the size you want.

 

 

Once you have done that repeat the step with a second layer of ten opened tea bags and allow to dry on the craft sheet.

Once the paper is dried (overnight is ideal) you can ease one corner of the paper away from the craft sheet and gentley remove it ready for use.

Any dried gel medium is easy to remove from the mat so dont worry if you have patches on your craft sheet.

You are now ready to use your finished paper which will look similar to this:

I was very impressed with this technique, admittedly it would take quite a few tea bags to make a larger piece of paper but this made about one side of a small dylusions journal.

I will post shortly the page I have made using this textural paper.

I hope you liked the technique.