A Teacup full of Paint

There is no doubt that tea completely redefines what is ‘cool’. We can drink it, put it on our faces, stuff our pillows and spice up our pastries with it and it can even foretell our future. The list goes on and on, but one important activity that should be added to it is – we can paint with it.

Tea as a painting medium is by no means a new concept, but certainly one that’s worth paying attention to. What does this technique involve you ask? It’s as simple as brewing a strong cup of tea and paining with it on watercolor paper. Different strengths of color can be achieved by brewing a stronger or weaker tea, or using a red herbal tea instead of e.g. a black tea.

Tea is the main medium for artist Andy Brown aka. Mr.Brown, who, in a playful fashion, expresses a sense of Britishness in this artwork. He not only uses the tea liquor, but also tea bags and one of his pieces featuring Queen Elizabeth consists of a 1000 used and unused tea bags!

There are also some artworks by Zach Franzen from Portland Studios, that use very strong tea. They are the very proof that one can create beautiful things with tea.

Irving Special Edition

Irving Tea has released a special edition package which is now available in Poland. Now for the bad and good news – bad – half of the deal is 100 tea bags of poor quality black tea, a blend of Indian, Kenyan and Ceylon teas. Good – the other half is a tea spice especially made for Irving to be sold only with this edition. The spice contains a mix of the traditional cinnamon, cloves and cardamon but also lemon peel and dried raspberries (and brown sugar). It has a grinder, which makes the spices even more aromatic. Another piece of good news is that you can use it with any other tea you like, but it works best with black teas. As for the flavor – it’s quite unusual and worth a try.

 

Don’t forget your Tea Bag!

Have you heard of the TeaCube yet? Well, it’s a strange, little design directed at those who are forgetful and tend to leave their tea bag steeping for eternity. Brought to life by Jieun Yang and Hanah Suh, it is simply as tea timer that will draw the tea bag out of the glass. As on the instuctions below after attaching the bag to a clip and pulling it out the timer will after 3 minutes take the tea bag out. So far it’s just a design, but the important question is, would a gaget like that prove itself in real life? Doubtful, very doubtful. It would almost seem like a better idea to invent a thermosensitive tea bag that leaves your glass once water starts cooling – not. In the world of ‘tea gagets to be’ the Sharky Tea Infuser seems like a far better choice.

 

Loose Tea vs. Tea Bags

If found these videos that bring up some important points in the ‘loose vs. bags’ debate. People who never buy loose leaf tea often don’t realize that there is a very significant difference between the two, both in flavor and qualities. On top of what is mentioned, I would like to add that silk tea bags which have been popularized several years ago, apart from being ‘in’ also give a better result. They usually contain premium tea instead of dust and they don’t give the infusion that ‘papery’ taste. The empty tea bags mentioned in the video are often referred to as ‘tea filters’ and you should be able to buy them in any tea store.