Tea and Tags

Last weekend, my friend Lorraine and I bought some Christmas tags from Christine at Primitive Heart in St. George, Ontario.  She told us she had stained them with tea prior to stamping them with red ink.  Such a simple idea but they look fabulous, don't they?

I immediately made some tea when I got home and started dunking plain manila tags into it.  I used two teabags and about 3 cups of hot water (from the tap as I was too lazy to get the kettle out!) in a small bowl.  In some cases, I thoroughly soaked the tags and other times, I just dribbled tea onto them by squeezing the tea bag or using a dropper.

I dried them in my dish rack.

I discovered that the colouring works best if you actually rub the tea bag on the tag.  Crumpling the tag either before or after it is wet results in cool lines and darker areas where the tea soaks in (see front tag in photo above).  The tea bag should be warm or hot (just be careful not to burn yourself), it doesn't seem to be as effective once it has cooled.  It also works well if you use a stencil.

I also stained some music paper, with excellent results:

It's definitely a process that I need to experiment with some more but in the meantime, I'm really happy with how mine turned out.  Here's a small tag that I then stamped using sepia coloured ink.

Lorraine has been experimenting as well.  She made me this beautiful tag for my birthday!