my tea obsession creates art

Most of the time I drink loose tea (Harney & Sons' Florence blend is my current favorite, closely followed by their Paris blend). I ordered a few samplers of sachets and teabags to try out some of their other teas and I fell in love with their cute tea tags.

So I kept them and decided to make some art for my naked kitchen walls!

I bought a couple of framed art pieces at Goodwill a few months ago. The wine-theme didn't really "fit" with my kitchen so I used the matted picture as a base for my tea-art.

First I tried putting the tags against some cut-to-size white cardstock, but they just blended in a bit too much.

I raided my scrapbook paper supplies and found some soft green striped paper that complemented the tea tags and went well with my wall colors.

I'm a bit anal, so I used a scrap piece of paper to make sure that the rows and columns of tea tags were the same distance from the edge of the mat... and then I could put in back into the frame (after I had painted it--it was originally a dark purpley-grayish color).

BEFORE:

(Also note the yucky bumps and lines from the wallpaper the previous owners had and painted over. Ugh.)

AFTER:

And a close-up:

And an even closer-up:

I'd been thinking/planning for this project for awhile... if you couldn't tell from the pile of teabag tags! It's the first "art" I have up in my kitchen... it's only taken me a year and two months-ish.

Not bad.

I still have a few of the larger tags left and a bunch of the smaller tags. I haven't decided what to do with them yet, if anything.

PS. As of today, I am a mere 4 years away from turning 30. Weird.