This week's Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge theme is food and drink. I decided to make some quote ribbons out of tea bags (imaginary drum roll) and here they are!
What in the world is a "tea bag quote ribbon" anyway? Well, I decorated tea bags, cut them up, sewed them back together in a long ribbony shape and stuck quotes on them, hence the name. I love using tea bags in my crafty creations because they have such great texture and are made to handle water and paint and whatever else you want to throw on them. Yet they're still light and delicate enough to be able to do things that paper just can't do. And so it began...I started with a plain tea bag that you can make your own tea in (if you wanted to use them for their intended purpose, which I never have). I cut the bag up the two longer sides, laid it out flat, and added some paint.
Next I shook on some Paper Artsy Infusions color stain, which I spritzed with water and then let dry. Since the Infusions stain powder has little brown granules in it, it looks very tea-ish and right at home on a tea bag, in my opinion.When that dried, I got things wet again by spritzing on some Distress Oxide sprays and scribbled around with Distress Watercolor Pencils, which I then added water to.While all that was drying, I made another tea bag in tones of teals and greens and followed the same process. Then I splattered on some Snow Cap Alcohol Ink Mixative for the white splotches. My apologies for the blurriness of the photo! It is not your eyes that are the problem; the problem was me snapping pictures too fast!My next move was to cut the bags into four strips each.Then I used my sewing machine to sew them back together end to end to form two long ribbons. Just for funsies, I used red thread on one ribbon strip and black thread on the other.
I thought it would be nice to add some quotes to the ribbons, so I stamped this favorite quote onto a piece of fabric, which I then cut up and glued to one of the ribbons. This quote comes from Tim Holtz's Purely Random stamp set - an oldie but a goodie. If you're familiar with that set, my words are configured differently than the quote stamp because I cut the quote stamp up years ago so I could stretch the quote out longer if I wanted to or stamp the words to fit into different areas. I used Ranger Jet Black Archival Ink, which works fine on fabric if you're not planning to wash it or use it on clothing-type stuff.I stamped another sentiment from Tim's Theories stamp set onto fabric and cut that one out, too. Then I glued the long quote to the green ribbon and the other quote to the pink ribbon. The green ribbon quote was too long to show adequately in a photo, but you get the gist of how it looked.Once these ribbons are done, you can use them in all sorts of projects. To store them, you can wind them around thread spools or old button cards or whatever you want to wrap them around, but I decided to whip out the Spellbinders Stitched with Love Bobbin die and stamp set to make cute little cards to hold these ribbons. I cut the bobbin cards, stamped them, and colored them with some paint.My ribbon and their holders were done!Was this the easiest way in the world to make ribbon? Um, no. But that's not why we make things. We make things because we know we will FEEL something at the end of it...even if it costs us ten times more and twenty times longer to make than if we would've just bought it, right? Yes! So craft on! It's worth the struggle and it's worth the investment of YOU to make something that didn't exist before. Here are the supplies I used that you can find at Simon Say Stamp:
- Tim Holtz Purely Random Stamp Set
- Tim Holtz Theories Stamp Set
- Spellbinders Stitched with Love Bobbin Die and Stamp Set
- Distress Watercolor Pencils: Set 1, Set 4
- Distress Oxide Sprays: Mustard Seed, Cracked Pistachio
- Ranger Snow Cap Alcohol Mixative
- Paper Artsy Infusions Color Stain: Rusty Car, Emerald Isle, Just Walnut, Are you Cerise
- Dina Wakley Acrylic Paint: White, Olive, Turquoise, Carnation, Lemon, Raspberry, Ocean
- Ranger Jet Black Archival Ink
Be sure to upload your projects that tie into the food/drink theme to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge for your chance to feel that sense of accomplishment and to be entered to win a $25 voucher to the Simon Says Stamp store.
