Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

"Worldly Women" series of pen and coloured pencil drawings on used tea bags for the 29 Faces Challenge in February 2016, presented to my daughter Naomi for her birthday. Naomi is Worldly Woman no. 29.

I like stitching into used tea bag paper ... this was an experiment printing a photo onto tea bag paper. I then stitched into the image and stitched the whole thing onto cotton fabric. By the way, I call these paper daisies, but according to Wikipedia " Rhodanthe  is a  genus  of  flowering plants  within the daisy family  Asteraceae , endemic to  Australia ."

Tea on Thursday is becoming Tea on Friday ... but here is number 4 in my preparation for my exhibition later in the year. These are just  small experimental works. Plop your used tea bags , still wet, onto a canvas either stretched or a canvas sheet, Let the tea bags do their work, and remove them  in a few hours - 24 hours is even better. Work with the pattern. You could enhance the pattern with paint, pencils, felt tip pens . In this one, I did some simple embroidery stitches to create "Wistful". 

Tea on Thursday , sorry a day late... this week the theme was decay, and I chose Miss Havisham  from the Charles Dickens novel, "Great Expectations". Miss Havisham was left at the altar, and from that day when she was meant to be married,she wore her wedding clothes, and left the wedding breakfast to decay over the years. The flowers around her veil are made from tea bag paper. I thought they look just the way white roses decay , wither and turn brown.. The roses are simple made by tearing tea bag paper to a desired width,  rolling the centre, and gradually fanning out the paper to make the outer petals  

It is now the trend to choose a word to motivate and inspire, rather than making New Year resolutions. Strange, I know ... but I have chosen "TEA" as my word. Later in the year, my exhibition will be based on tea, so most of my creative activities this year will involve tea. Lots of  tea drinking is the most likely activity , So each Thursday ( most Thursdays) , I will post something  "tea" related. Here is my first for the year... An art tag made with a used tea bag paper , with some purchased images and stitching, created for the theme Homes/Shelter. I have added the words " A home is not a  mere transient shelter; its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it... H.L. Mencken )