Staining Papers For Collage With Tea

Using tea to stain mixed media papers is another way to create interesting effects, textures and tones. Tea creates a variety of colors and patterns. You can boil a kettle of water, pour the liquid in mugs and seep a few bags of tea at the same time in several different mugs. Then dab or print using the teabags onto drawing or copy paper, creating all kinds of patterns. Be careful that the teabags are not too hot when you handle. You can also fill an aluminum pan with tea soaked water and dip your papers into the pan of tea water. The paper will get very soggy, but it will dry. Prepare some baking sheets lined with drawing paper to dry the soaked sheets. The best way to approach this process is to experiment. You can crumble the paper before you begin staining. You can also vary how you apply the tea liquid to the paper. Besides dabbing wet tea bags onto papers or soaking papers in liquid, you can also use a paint brush or foam brush to brush on the tea to drawing or copy paper. etc.