This week’s Documented Life Project prompt encouraged participants to use tea bags as a substrate. I have written before about how much I love tea and my love of tea has even inspired an art journal page or two before. Putting my hands to tea bags, used or unused, was not a problem. I watched a few YouTube tutorials about working on tea bags, got an idea mulling around in my head and set to work. The result was more than lacking. It was hideous. Truly. You know I am just as likely to share my artistic disasters as successes on this blog so the fact I didn’t even stop to take a photo of it before lobbing it in the bin should convey something of how totally and utterly ugly it was. Thankfully I had been concerned enough about the tannins from the tea doing nasty things to my art journal that I had worked on a separate piece of paper I was going to attach to the journal. Getting rid of it was, therefore, quick and easy.
Back to square one, I decided to ditch the whole idea of painting or drawing on top of tea bags and decided to just use tea as my inspiration. It has been some time since I properly practiced my typography skills so I decided to play around with text and with negative space. Right at the beginning of Life Book, a lesson from Joanne Sharpe had inspired me to embrace using my own handwriting and I was pleased with the outcome. I decided, therefore, to deploy some of my learning from that lesson in my art journal. I found the quotation online (it’s from Mary Lou Heiss but I failed to add that to the page before taking the photo) and used very wet watercolour around the letters to create colourful, bleeding puddles around the text and imagery.
Now I need to pop the kettle on.
A Pict in PA 
That’s pretty. 🙂
Thank you. It was quick and easy to do. I painted it while cooking dinner. Always a multi-tasker. I did, however, waterlog the paper, hence the buckling.
Hey, did you ever do that one deli paper one with lacquer/canvas like we’d talked about??
Not yet. It is squirreled away in the back of my mind though as a project to work on when I have additional free time.
This is wonderful, Laura. The colors are so bright and inviting. It was a nice idea to practice your lettering in this prompt too.
Thanks. That’s what I’m trying to do when a prompt doesn’t chime with or work for me: instead I consider what I need some practice in and take it from there.
Great idea!
That’s a shame about your tea bag disaster 😦 But you made up for it with a very pretty watercolour. And you do have beautiful hand writing!!
Thank you very much. I’m going to stick to drinking tea rather than trying to use it in art.
LOL!!