A Little Help From My Friends

I have recently put the word out with my tea-loving friends that I need tea bags and they have been flowing in! What a wonderful variety of herbal, black and green I've received! I'm finally accumulating enough to begin work soon on a large piece...I will need hundreds of bags, I think, to make this work. So at the moment a lot of time is going into "preping" the bags so they are empty, flat, and ready to use. A little patience is required here, but I do find it relaxing to focus on such a simple task. Here my work table is filled with tea bags in various stages:




Meanwhile, I've been experimenting with collaging tea tags onto small square canvases. Even with the canvases only 6" x 6" it requires a lot of tags to complete a piece. Here again, the contributions of friends is a life saver!

Bring on the Herbal Tea

I'm widening my net in search of tea bags (when will this "craze" ever end, one might ask......I honestly don't know!) By enlisting friends I am finding a wider range of papers and tints in tea bags and hopefully will be able to soon start working much bigger than the 16" x 20" that is my largest canvas now. I've also experimented with working on paper instead of canvas, and I do like the effect.

The pieces tend to be lighter in tone now, and I am layering in different ways. As much as I like the heavily stained works, these are a lot more subtle and and interesting in a different way.


So this work continues. It's wonderful to look up from my work table and see the emerging spring unfolding outside the window. It is a joyous time of year!