Progress on The Cup that Cheers

Today I made further progress on my art journal page on the theme of tea.

I finished the last session by painting the piece of chicken packaging with white acrylic, and today I applied some red acrylic with a palette knife, so that it coloured only the raised parts.

I started a new scratch paper today with paint from my palette. Here is the start of it.

I have been thinking a lot about what to do about the three overlapping teabags on the left-hand page, and have decided not to use them as they are. I layered up three fresh ones and stuck them together with regular matt gel medium.

I searched for some images of tea plants on the Internet and painted the branch of a tea bush on the three overlapping teabags.

I then layered the painted teabags on top of the original three and stuck them together with regular matt gel medium.

Further progress on my scratch paper.

The layered and painted teabags looked a bit pale so I added some Tea Dye and Vintage Photo distress inks to the top layer to darken it a bit.

A mock-up showing the painted teabags in place on the left-hand page.

The chicken packaging applied to the right-hand page with regular matt gel medium. It looked too stark and white so before sticking it down, I brushed it with several layers of brown acrylic paint well diluted with water to form a wash. I trhen cut out the top section to fit around the saucer.

Using a small square of paper that had been sprayed with inks and Perfect Pearls and had been in my backgrounds folder for ages, I wrote the words of the text using my sepia Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen, and cut them out. I inked the edges with Tea Dye distress ink and a home-made blending pad. Here is a mock-up of the placing of the text pieces.

The final picture for today. I stuck down the text pieces with regular matt gel medium, and outlined them with the sepia pen. I also cut three “tea” words from the acrylic film piece and stuck them down with the same gel medium. When they were dry, I outlined them with a Uniball gold pen. I applied some copper and gold gilding wax to the cup and its handle, and a little onto the chicken packaging, but not enough to obscure the red paint. The teabags are still not stuck down because I am still toying with the idea of adding some machine embroidery to them.

This is definitely the look I am after. I am pleased with the way the textures have worked, using the teabags to create the cup and saucer, and the chicken packaging to represent a red and white tablecloth, and the fact that there are many media in this project, including some real tea!

I shall think some more about the embroidery on the teabags, and also whether I need to add a border to the page. Watch this space.