Ephemera Embellishment Fun

 Hello!  I think Spring is finally here.  Well maybe lol.  Anyway a friend of mine shared a video of recycled teabag envelopes.  Those little envelopes the tea bags come in when you buys a box of tea.  So often we just throw those out.  There have been many people on the internet that have done tea bag art where they discard the tea leaves and use the little thin sashes to make an embellishment for a junk journal of scrapbook but usually people just threw out the little envelopes that those tea bags came in.  Well my friend found this cute idea and knew it was right up my alley.  Boy I came home and wanted to gathered all I could find and get to work.  Not knowing what I was going to do with them at the time just that I had to make them.  Well Guess what?  There was not ONE SINGLE tea bag in an envelope in my entire house!  I have tons of different brands of teas as I love tea.  I won't go into all the different brands but everyone one knows the main one that has been around forever.  The one in the big yellow box.  Dare I say the name?  I mean I don't want to "Diss" them because they no longer put their tea bags in individual envelopes.  I mean everyone is making changes to their product packaging.  But geeze just when I counted on my box I opened it to find they are now in 4 separate trays of 25 bags wrapped in gold cello type paper.  UGHHHHH.  Yes Lipton I see your point but.  Then I ripped through my other herbal teas and they were all individual pouches but the type you had to rip open not an envelope.  I may have to reach out to friends to check their cupboards.

Time to pivot.  So with nothing to go by I decided that a normal teabag envelope is 2.5" x 2.5   A friend of mine one time gave me a box of linen paper from her office when the office was moving to a different building and all paper products with logos had to be discarded.  Although it was super thin paper (thinner than normal printer paper) she figured it could be used as an insert sheet for sentiments inside of cards so instead of trashing it she brought some home.  I was lucky to get some and decided this was the perfect weight for the teabag envelopes.  I cut a bunch of strips 2.5" by 6" and scored at 2.5" and at 5" .   Since these were already white I didn't need to Gesso so I went right into watercoloring each piece just to give color.  I used a Pearl pan watercolor set.  My first attempt I was way too heavy on the color and I chose too dark of colors for Shabby Chic.  My later ones are much softer in back ground color.  But it's fun just to play and get messy.  I splattered after the paints were dried too.  

Next was to make them look like teabag envelopes.  If you remember those envelopes had little ridges along the sides.  Hmmmm, how to do that only on the sides.  Using the scoreboard did not give me what I wanted but I had a pastry roller in the kitchen and when placed on the edge of my envelope as it sat on the edge of my Cuttlebug platform right after I applied wet glue it seemed to give me what I wanted.  Perfect?  No, but it'll do.

Now to embellish.  You can use whatever you'd like.  Left over stickers.  Some of those Tim Holtz ephemera 's.  Scrap lace. Buttons or bows.  Charms or even pop can tabs.  What ever you have laying around.

Now how to use these.  First the could have a paper clip added to the back and be used as a paperclip inside your journals or books.  Add to the front of a tag making the open side the front and gluing the one side to the tag, you can then insert another smaller tag into it or maybe folded cash. Add inside pockets of mini albums to hold little tag messages or cropped photos.  Fill with little extra sequins, tiny tags, punch outs, or how about mini envelopes in the envelope lol then seal flap and punch a hole in the corner tie a ribbon and add to a package or tag as an extra gift to a crafty friend.  I just add a ticket and thread to the front of mine and inside I slipped in a few extra tiny word die cuts.  Maybe a few grommets will be added later too.

Careful....these are so addicting to make.  I could go on and on and on and on.  I really wish they were the real deal.  Re-cycled teabag envelopes.  They might have turned out to be a bit of a more perfect envelope but I'm happy with these

Til next time........................................................................................