What do you do with your used tea bags? I dry mine out and collect them of course.

Doesn’t everyone?

Ok, I’m not normal.

I just love the tea coloured stains – I’ve used tea to dye things before, and used flattened tea bags on the dress I made recently.

Anyway, the tea bags and a trout seemed the perfect match for an art project. For Art From Trash of course. This is another of the projects I created at work with the help of one of the guys.

First I drew a trout on a large piece of paper (from a roll so it was long enough). Traced this onto some thin MDF and cut it using a jigsaw.

Since it was going to be a considerable size and moving it in a car would present a problem, I kept the trout in two parts. I glued strips of wood to the back of both pieces at either end. These served two purposes – the ensured the trout hung out from the wall a bit instead of sitting flat against it, adding dimension. It also gave me somewhere to attach hinges, making this a foldable piece of art!

Practical as well as pretty!

My assistant helped me paint on the face, tail and fins by adding all the spots. Then we began the long process of gluing on the tea bags together.

I left the strings on them on purpose – I think the movement of the strings in a breeze gives the illusion of movement.

In order to blend the 2D painted surface into the rich texture of the tea bags I used flattened bags which let the painted colours show through.

Add a hole for the ‘fishing hook’ and it was ready to hang.

 And here it is at Art From Trash.

Yep. That is a sold sticker! It sold pretty much straight away, and I’ve had enquiries as to whether it has any siblings.

It was a great success at the show.

z