FIND random - but handy- things like tea strips go green in your recycled art craftiness

Tea is good. So is art.

I love tea. People love tea. It is one of the most popular drinks in the world. For me it is the variety of flavors you can pack into a liquid substance that just screams delicious. There are teas that taste like fruit, like dirt (ginseng), like flowers and everything else inbetween. One of my favorite brands of teas is Tazo. A Portland based company that has a great simple design that has trademarked itself everywhere. I love it and use its strips both to think about where I come from and to enjoy the colorful effect it has as am eco friendly recycling design method for my home decorating.

The amount  of this particular brand of tea that I have consumed can be seen in my past mural and room decorating illustrations.  I really enjoy making green friendly and recycled art projects in my free time. To me it is about being resourceful and using things to their fullest extent, from taking FOUND materials to drinking tea to finish an art mural.

Magazine Elephant with Tazo Tea Decals

How do I use them? Well, one day I realized when you take out the staple you have a perfectly sized decal with an burst of color that can be easily placed on a wall to emphasize other, larger, pieces of art. The tags became my other favorite recycled material to collect and place around rooms I have lived in.

Here is my process:

drink drink drink tea tea tea tea

1) Drink tea. I collected mine over a long period of time. Its like what, 20 bgs per box? Well, I really recommend the Wild Sweet Orange and Passion, so start drinking!  If you have a tea everymorning, just remember to take off the tag part before you throw it away. I used to come home and find them in my jacket or pants pockets from saving them all the time.

Remove staples:might need good nails (watch out nail biters)

2) Take out the staples. This is a little time consuming but I always turned it into a good thing and would catch up on a TV show or movie while removing them. It became a meditative thing like how doing the dishes or mowing the lawn is for some people. That makes me sound a little crazy, but who isnt?

3) Add small little balls of sticky/blue tack, or whatever you refer to as that white stuff you can put on the backs of stuff to stick on walls. Use this as the easy way to remove and place the tea strips. This makes design decisions easier to make as you can move them around any way you want.

Work with the color or shape

3) Usually keeping color coordinated makes whatever you decal a little more well balanced. I reccomend stocking up on different colors for different moods. They are the easiest thing to move around so find out where you like them the most. I always use a ton of them to embellish another recycled art project.

Choose a design of your own

Adds pop to a BW design

     







  
    4) Place them around, into, on, inside, over on top,  beneath, or into their own interesting places. My favorite is using them to emphasize collages or murals I have already made. It makes them pop out more, adds another recycling element to it and reminds me of home all at the same time.

Enjoy.

Hong Kong Swirl