Printing on tea bags tutuorial

‘I have a large bowl that sits on my counter that I toss my tea bags in after I use them. When it gets to the point where it is overflowing, kind of like now, I tear each one open and dump out the tea.

Then I flatten them out and put them in large ziplock bags.

I am saving tea bags not only for my own use, but also for my upcoming Tea & Ephemera workshops at Create in August.

I really like the tea bags that are folded in half with a staple at the top because they make a nice sized piece of paper and if you are lucky you can gets some pretty nice little labels too. Good fodder for collage.

In the Tea and Ephemera workshop we are going to be playing with several different ways to use the lowly tea bag as an artistic component in mixed media textile collage.

Why the tea bag? Well, tea bags are a thin light weight paper that is translucent allowing one to see through them, they have a lovely tea stained patina giving them a vintage paper look and they are so thin that when it is adhered to fabric it literally disappears. It also has the benefit of being paper so media like inks and colored pencils work beautifully on them.

One of the things that is fun to do with tea bags is print on them. The way to do this is scan an image into your computer or find some copyright free imagery on the net, and print it out on your printer. I have a black and white toner printer that I bought for this purpose, because toner ink will not bleed if it gets wet the way ink jet will.

Place a tea bag over the  printed image and tack it in place with a small piece of scotch tape on each corner.

Place the paper with the tea bag on it in the paper tray in the correct position to print out, usually it is face down top of paper going into the printer first. To double check place an x or other mark on a blank piece of paper and print your image on it, making note of how you placed the paper in the paper tray and the direction of the image when it came out.

Here is the printed tea bag, ready to be collaged.

Another thing to try, is printing a color image on a tea bag.

This is a photo I took recently at a garden center and altered in Photoshop.

Follow the same procedure as with the black and white toner image, lining up the tea bag on the printed photo and tape in place.

After printing out the image spray a coat of fixitive on the tea bag to keep image bleeding to a minimum when adhering it to the fabric. I usually use gel medium to glue the tea bags to my fabric, but in this case I might opt for using Mistyfuse.'

Sourced from Judy Coates Perez

Creative alchemist

Oct 23^rd 2012

http://judyperez.blogspot.com.au

thoughts and artist reference Megan Bostic.

Ok so I ve had another thought or idea to add to the previous myriad - 
Tea .... yup an installation about tea ..... more specifically about the cups of tea that we can't drink together again ..... and how awesome it would be to sit down and drink a cup of tea with you now, here - all grown up to listen really listen to your story those parts you could share understand share my story piece together some of the fragments and memories .... but it can't be ..... 

This work is titled The First Year of Grief 
materials: silk organza, kool-aid, tea, beeswax, waxed linen thread
technique: hand-stitching, material manipulation

Sourced from https://meganqbostic.squarespace.com/grief-chronicles/

Inspiration for this idea came from viewing the art of Megan Bostic who was also exploring ideas of grief and loss of her mum. She writes in her bio:

‘I am a mixed-media fiber artist currently working in Raleigh, North Carolina.

My work is an internal monologue revealed—my attempt to articulate the difficult emotions of grief and loss into visible form.

Increasingly sculptural and installation-based, my work relies on material exploration and textile-based techniques. I constantly strive to make my work evocative, experiential and indicative of the emotionality contained within the concept’ (Bostic 2013[1]).

Another snapshot of her work :

The First Month of Grief

Materials: petri dishes
 resin, resin dye, human hair.

technique: resin dyeing and casting

sourced from https://meganqbostic.squarespace.com/grief-chronicles/

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[1] Bostic, M 2013 Megan Q. Bostic About , viewed 16 August 2014, https://meganqbostic.squarespace.com/biography/

Rough Timeline

Timeline for Sculpture

Main ideas

1)   Photography, memory and loss

Research: Camera Lucida – Roland Barthes

                   The Magic Mirror – thesis Theresa Moerman

                    Christian Boltanksi

                    Eva Hesse

                    Rachel Whiteread

                    Kasia Larsen – fragments of me video

                   Egyptian mummification – photograph embalms time

                              

Crux of the idea: Print photos onto unusual surfaces – ideally I would like ephemereal materials that will cause the photo to distort – or to fragment it

Such as wax, organza and then harden it with fabric hardener (check with annelize ), packing material, household objects such as mirror (too cliché?) tiles, polyfiller - curtains, glass bricks …..

How:  ask Jenny/ Carolyn to give me a crash course on screenprinting and find out what materials it can work on

Also speak to Bruce Reynold about other photographic processes that could be useful eg cyanotype

When:            Week 4 – I need to have chosen which path I m gonna take or say 2 and then start experimenting with those; get knowledge of the skills, set up blog

                        Week 5 -  select photographs, manipulate, expose onto the screen if that’s the way its going

                        Week 6 – screenprint onto a variety of materials also try eucalyptus release

                        Week 7 – feedback

                       

Risks:             chemical s used and potential side effects such as the eucalyptus oil, fabric hardener etc

                        Risks of process of screen printing – new process, Uv exposure

Exhibit:          potentially as a suspension in the whitebox or could possibly suit the webb gallery better .

Idea 1b) Project photos onto the uncooked sadza on the gallery floor …

2)   Make a mould out of parts of my body

crux of the idea: - as per the thesis – a cast is in a sense a negative of the positive of the person – material void – speaks of absence we can touch – my body but also linked to mum by certain physical traces – link to landscape – when mum died I felt like I lost a sense of home and who I was she died and yet parts of me died too which I have been searching for when I went back to the family home in 2011 and since then in photographs …. Also a sense of violence in the way she died (accident) as well as linking to violence perpetrated in my motherland – loss of mum linked to a sense of loss of a motherland and a sense of home and belonging, sutures stitch back the pieces …..also about Zimbabweans and all that has been lost and people generally as we have all lost pieces of ourselves ….

                       

                        Other research: Ana Mendieta

                                                   Eva Hesse

                                                   Doris Salcedo

How:              hmmm how the heck to make a cast need to research that

                        or use plaster bandage to make it from live

                        or use wax slightly cooled …..

                        clear sealant ?

When:            Week 4:  more research on casting  & potentially some training ?

 do 4x  small experiements to assess whether the idea is viable

Week 5 & 6: take experiments and casts further to make 2 x substantial ones for week 7

Risks:             chemical exposure, plaster bandage dust, burns from wax

                        Unfamiliar processes

Idea 3)  Lifeboat theory

Crux of the idea: As a more lighthearted yet still meaningful project to me is to explore this idea of the lifeboat theory as written about by Donald Miller as commentary on society ….. narrative of 5 people being in need of a lifeboat and there only being space for 4 – who has value to take the space ? – question of values – of being inside and outside and who determines who has value …. The fight for importance – media 15 minutes of fame – selfies … yet whats the point of this striving – death -

Research: I have to look into this – Malthus

                                                            Hardin – lifeboat ethics

                                                            Donald Miller – lifeboat theory

How:   make a tile of images of people high resolution underlaid by the framework of a lifeboat laid out on the gallery floor so that people can wallk in and out OR use an actual lifeboat with cardboard models of people ?

When:            week 3 – think and see if this is actually viable and interesting or wheteher to keep it on the back burner until next year

                        Week 4 – think up 3x different ways to present this look up companies that do tile photographs or maybe liveimage ?

                        Week 5 – start activating  - collecting images of people and boat design

                        Week 6 – send in for printing in time for week 7

Risks:              storage / safety ?