Teabag Art–Colouring with Distress Inks

After drying and emptying them, my first step in decorating and embellishing the teabags was to add some colour with distress inks. Most of the bags I have saved were Lapsang Souchong which is quite a pale Chinese tea and doesn’t colour the fabric of the bags very much, but leaves them a very subtle tea shade. Sometimes there are little accents of darker colour, and I am planning to use these bags as they are.

After the bags are dried and emptied, they are usually rather creased, and I thought that before I ironed them I could take advantage of this, and swiped them with the Tea Dye distress ink pad to accentuate the creases.

Here is a selection to which I also added some colour around the edges, using Shaded Violet, Worn Lipstick and Salty Ocean distress inks.

I am planning to stitch these together and add some decorative machine stitching, and backing them onto some calico or old sheeting.

I had some fun experimenting with one of a set of six square rubber stamps that I’ve had for a while – very attractive geometric designs. I used an old metallic ink pad, picking up ink from the copper and gold sections. When stamped, this did not come out particularly metallic, but gave a nice subtle result.

I am also planning to make a Teabag Art page in my small leather art journal.

Here is the video I made showing the inking process.