Tea & Coffee Bags...from the girl who saves everything

I had been over at Kim Henkel's blog and had seen that she'd done some interesting things with tea bags and leaves and such. Not knowing exactly what her process was I decided to do a little experimenting on my own. I'd been saving tea bags lately for the paper and wanted to harvest a few petals from our wildflower mix outside.

I grabbed the nearest paper on my table which happened to be an envelope and Mod- Podged the petals to the bags and applied them to the envelope. 

I was delighted with the results. Now I'm flat out of used teabags!

Too bad because it was fun making this.

Now for some fabric postcards made with coffee bags~

Please note that wonky stitching is part of my style and I take great pains to not have it look too perfect...

You understand, I know

I save interesting coffee labels. This is from across the border in Mexico.

Combate coffee is roasted with sugar making for a rich brew. Now that I've all but quit coffee I won't be getting so many bags anymore. I panicked a bit when they quit making this beautiful label and I had sent my only empty bag off to the UK in one of my swaps.

Thankfully I found another on a different trip a little deeper into Mexico later on.

Ubiquitous American coffee.

Unfortunately we have to set foot in Walmart for this kind up here in Alaska.

I've pretty much swerved my husband's pedestrian taste in coffee over to gourmet at this point anyway so we don't pick up this kind so often anymore.

Ah, the Vietnamese weasel coffee, purported to have passed through a weasel's digestive system but I haven't seen the provenance on that and it quite possibly could be a false claim. 

Great marketing for someone like me. I must say that the adventure in Hanoi on my own searching for it was quite worth it.

I'm not sure where we picked up this coffee but I got the African fabric swatch at a little shop in North Carolina last year with the sweetest little assortment of  other fabric squares.

Sari silk, sequins and citrus bag

Thai rice bag

I stitched this rice bag to a cereal box. It will become a journal.

I picked up some Mexican oilcloth last winter in Magdelena de Kino and thought it would be nice for some journals as well.

I enjoyed my day back in the mixed media studio are taking a bit of a break from lampworking before my trip back east. 

Now it really should be called "Where the Hell is my Worktable Wednesday?" because it looks as if a bomb went off in there with paper and fabric and thread everywhere.

...Well I am productive at least!