More experimenting with paper

 I am trying to come up with some interesting papers that I might be able to share with my collage group - we are trying various techniques this year and have been asked to come up with some ideas. 

So I have tried the alcohol inks, now I am moving on to tea-dyeing some paper. We have cups of tea from a pot, several times a day, and every time I throw out the tea leaves I think I could be reusing them. So now I have!

I came across a visual diary using 110gsm paper (Derwent, I think) and had used it to flatten some interesting flowers. A couple of the pages may have small prints from the flowers but they were very pale. 

I folded the paper (mainly because it didn't fit into the container I was using). I put the tea leaves into the folded bit. I got the tea leaves out of the compost bin on the bench. Then I made a fresh pot to get the liquid. That meant that I had more tea leaves, so I added them as well. 

It has now been over an hour that they have all been sitting there - I hope the paper hasn't disintegrated!

I had better go and take them out, leave them out to dry. I read somewhere that I should cover them with paper towel and something heavy to help keep them flat. Off to do that now. 

Well, one piece tore a little but I don't think I am bothered by that. I decided to put it onto some old newspaper rather than use the paper towel. Therefore I am not putting anything on top to flatten it. If I decide to use it for collage, I'll probably rip it up anyway. Hence the lack of worry about tearing one piece, 

Addendum: I just looked up my blog to see what I might have done in the past about tea dying paper - I didn't find that, exactly, but did come across one post where we had used tea as well as other chemicals to get some gorgeous papers. (I still have some, I found them when I was tidying up and putting together papers that might be useful for my collage group - never throw anything out!)