Tonight is the Christmas Stroll in Whitefish, MT and I made four gallons of spiced cider to serve at the store. The recipe calls for tea and I used 20 tea bags.

That photo looks similar to my dye pots but I promise I didn’t use the pots I use to dye fiber. Anyways, I have seen quite a few people who have used tea bags in their fiber art work. I never have used any because it always seems like too much work to take them apart, clean them out and then dry them. But I decided I would try it today. It was kind of painful to get them all cleaned out but I’ll see if it was worth it 🙂

Here they all are laid out to dry. I do like the color and it will go well with an idea I am working on currently. I plan on doing some work in my sketchbook with neutral colors based loosely on autumn, decay and the coming of winter.

I already have those lovely eco printed papers but decided I needed more backgrounds painted for the sketchbook. I used walnut ink to paint the pages.

You probably noticed that the pages have some other colors besides brown from the walnut ink.

That is because this is the paper that the pages were lying on when I painted them. I have used this “drop cloth” for many projects including dyeing so there is pigment that runs very easily on this paper. I like how it was completely out of my control how the pages came out. Once they are dry, I’ll start working on some ideas in my “neutral” sketchbook.

I forgot to show you these cards when I made them. I used some painted papers that I had left over from my color class. I don’t usually use commercial stamps but this card felt like it needed something. The red strip of fabric is silk paper.

Here is eco print paper used to make a card.

And again, various painted papers. I try to make up several cards to have on hand. Then when we need a card, I have one ready to go.