Tea Dying Tags

It has been raining outside the last two days, so I am making good use of my time experimenting in the kitchen.  Thought I would try out tea dying some of my tags.

First, started with two different teas.   Sample A was Lipton Green Tea Cranberry Pomegranate and Sample B was Davidson's Christmas Tea a blend of black tea and spices, very fragrant.

For Sample's A & B used two cups of tap water each.  Brought it to a boil.  Dropped in one tea bag in each sample cup and steeped for 5 minutes.

Next, dropped in stamped manila shipping tags and white stamped gift tags. I used some of my "cast offs" to practice with.

Checked in 5 mins for color saturation.  Nope, need more color.

Put back into tea mixture for 3 hours.

Pulled out onto paper towel and patted down with paper towel.

Wow, what a learning lesson.  The Sample A group of tags I expected to be some shade of red or pink since the tea is that color.  No, all tags came out with a blue tint.  The Sample B group of tags came out in a variety of pale brown tint. 

The shipping tags from both sample groups did not have much color saturation.  In fact, I'm am not happy at all with the colors of the shipping tags.

I allowed to all tags to dry overnight.

Once dried, the gift tags from both sample groups came out beautiful.  Sample A color is best described as a vintage french blue with grey tones on the edges.  Sample B color is a very nice aged pale brown hue to the gift tag. The gift tag on top in white was the original version.

All of the tags were stamped prior to coloring.  I did notice that the paper texture was raised and a little ruff.  I wonder if this would effect stamping if done after tea dying?  I am now experimenting with unstamped paper to see if the tea dying process effects the inking of the paper.

Oh yeah, the tags from the Sample B group "Christmas Tea" has a pleasant spicy aroma to them.