Tea Bags as paper for backgrounds

As a follow up to the previous post I have also used the remains of used tea bags to make backgrounds.
The beautiful colours that you get if you allow the tea bag to stand for several days will astound you.
The first photo shows the finished paper and you can see that I have rubbed "Goldfinger" gold on the bottom section and bronze in the middle section and on the top and the sides I have left them untouched.




The first thing that you have to do is save all your tea bags after making yourself a cuppa--but don't squeeze all the water out or if you do then dunk it again in some more water.
It is important to start with a wet tea bag.
Now stand them up to allow them to dry( like little soldiers) with the tea leaves still inside because this is where the colour comes from.

After about 2 days they should be dry and you now have to open the tea bags to remove the dried tea leaves--it doesn't matter if you tear the paper but I do try not to at this point--no reason really -I just find it a challenge to see if I can do it.

I know there are different shaped tea bags but these are the ones we use.

And this is what they look like empty.

I then proceed to use the same method to make the paper as shown in the previous post but I lightly sprayed Walnut ink on these to get the extra brown colour that I was after.

I know someone is going to ask "Why not just use Walnut ink in the first place without all the drying business " and you probably could -but I just love to see the colours that the dried out tea bag gives.
I have also used the tea bags in an art quilt which I blogged about here