A Vintage Journey Challenge - August: A Cup of Tea for Your Art

Welcome to the heat of summer everyone!  We're in the midst of a heatwave here in MA, so it's a glorious summer if you are on vacation or you don't have to do anything outside (!)

It's also time for the August A Vintage Journey Challenge.  Jennie is our lovely and talented hostess this month and her challenge is "A Cup of Tea for Your Art"

Here is her description of the challenge: "Pour yourself an extra cup of tea and use it in your project. In your cup you could dye lace, ribbon, wood, paper and flowers, or use it to create splashes or cup rings on your project. And don't just limit yourself to "ordinary tea" - there's green tea, yellow tea, black tea, herbal teas and fruit teas - whatever you've got in your cup! Just remember to ensure that you create in one of our preferred styles of vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

I decided to make a card using tea themed stamps.

I added a vintage lace strip to serve as a table cloth for the teapot to sit on.  I added a little teabag charm to the pot - rubbing it with a bit of Prima Bronze Age Metalique Wax to tone done the shininess of it.

 I adhered some pink 'tea roses' to the die cut frame and beside the teapot, adding enamel dots to their centers.

A few process photos:

I brewed some strong tea using tea Kent and I purchased when we were on Safari in Kenya way back in 1998.  Who knew Kenya was one of the major tea growers in the world?  It is delicious tea and I was glad I brought some home with me!  And, as you can see, I still have some left after all these years as seen in the bag. 

So I boiled just about a half cup of water and poured it into a teacup.  I added a lot of tea so it would brew dark.  I have two panels of watercolor paper at the ready for staining with the tea!

After letting the tea steep a while, I strained the tea into another cup and, since I was in the kitchen and had forgotten to bring a paint brush down from my craft room - I used a baster to brush the tea over the watercolor paper!   I took the panels back up to my craft room and dried them with my heat tool.

I die cut the Tiny Tattered florals and some leaves out of Kraft Core-dinations paper in pink and green.  Here's also one of the stamps I used - this is from Stampendous.

I die cut the frame out of one tea dyed panel, stamped the Keep Calm sentiment on the oval and layered it all over a Vintage Cream card base. I popped up the oval frame piece on foam dots.  I die cut and stamped the teapot out of the 2nd tea dyed panel and layered it in the corner, adding the charm on a foam dot.  I adhered the lace, flowers and some dew drops.

So we hope you will join us for A Cup of Tea this month!  You'll find lots of inspiration from the Creative Guides over at A Vintage Journey.  The challenge is open until Sept 5.

I'm linking my card to:

Watercooler Wednesday

Stamps:  Kettle On - Stampendous, Tea for Two - Papertrey Ink.
Paper:  water color paper - Canson, Vintage Cream - PTI, pink and green Kraft Core-dinations.
Ink:  Wendy Vecchi Archival Potting Soil, Cocoa Bean - PTI.
Accessories:  brewed tea, brush, vintage lace from stash, Two for Two Dies, Pierced Feature Frames: Ovals - PTI, tea charm - Custers Last Stamp Prima Bronze Age Metalique Wax, Tiny Tattered Florals die and quill tool - Tim Holtz/Sizzix, enamel dots - Altenew, October Sky Dew Drops - Honey Bee Stamps, foam dots.