Who said you had to buy expensive acrylic paints, specialty art paper, and get expensive paintbrushes dirty to create your own art?
Art is what you make it and you can have a whole bunch of fun in the process using mixed media, which just means more than one type of medium. Art is meant to be relaxing. To give your mind something to get engrossed in without overthinking it.
What simpler way to do that than by upcycling used tea bags.
3 Creative Ways to Make Mixed Media Art with Tea Bags
- Go vintage with paper napkins
Paper napkins are terrific for decoupage art. Super affordable and since most are 2 or 3 ply (referring to the layers of paper they have) the print is only on the top layer. Rub the layers with your thumb and forefinger and they come apart easily.
Only the top layer will be printed and that’s the only bit you need for the design. Glue that over a dried-out teabag and you will get a vintage looking design.
Since a lot of napkins have multiple patterns, such as flowers, shapes, animal prints, or even themed napkins like festive ones with elves, Santa, reindeers, and the traditional Christmas tree, one napkin can give you multiple designs to glue onto a dried tea bag.
Stick that onto some stock card and if you like the final piece, apply a fixative over it so you can frame it up for display.
- Stamp and stencil art directly onto teabags
You don’t need to consider yourself artistic to create gorgeous art. Artists make stencils that let anyone, regardless of artistic or creative talents, experiment with different styles.
Among the simplest is clear acrylic stamps, rubber stamps or wooden stamps.
Affordable to buy from most craft stores and online marketplaces, you can buy the stamps and an ink pad, then all that’s left to do is to press the stamp into the ink pad and stamp it onto a dried teabag. It will give you an outline to colour in, paint, or make the ink bolder by highlighting the ink-stamped lines bringing it to the forefront.
To add more mixed media into the design, handwrite some sentences, cut them out as narrow strips of paper and glue them around your drawing. You will be left with a coloured in drawing or a painting with a handwritten message attached to it.
- Create a watercolour background for your photos
There are hours of fun to be had with the kids using different flavoured tea bags. The different flavours create a mixture of colours that’s ideal for watercolour art.
You will need a quality watercolour paper because being water-based, this would destroy normal paper.
To make the art, just wet the tea bags, rub them over the paper, or squeeze drops of water on different parts. Air blow the coloured water in different directions using a straw, or for wider coverage and faster drying, use a hairdryer on the low heat setting.
Cranberry tea bags will give you reddish-pinks, peppermint tea bags add some green, oolong tea bags can add a tinge of orange, and regular tea bags for your brown. The fun begins when the colours overlap on watercolour paper because as artists know, combining colours makes new shades. When the cranberry-coloured water mixes with greens from peppermint teabags, you will get a lilac-violet shade.
Use this as your backing paper to affix a photo on top.
Once framed with a picture mount, it will look like it has three layers. The mount, then the watercolour backing paper, then the photo. It’s the simplest mixed media art using only paper with a creative twist.