How to Rust Tea Bags for Your Art Journal

If you want to use “rusted” tea bags to make art journal or mixed-media art, this is how to get those marks on the tea bags.

Here’s the supply list for rusting tea bags:

Transcript of video:

Lay out your clean tea bags across the rusty pieces in an old cookie sheet. Try not to get too much overlap as you lay out your teabags.
Grab a spritzer bottle full of clean water and randomly spray these teabags. The point of this is to get the water to soak through the tea bag and connect with the rusty parts underneath. Don’t saturate the tea bags, just a random misting will help us get some black marks.
Grab a piece of plastic and lay across the cookie sheet with the wet tea bags. Press down lightly. It's not necessary to really have 100% contact. We're just looking for random contact so the teabags can pick up the black marks from the rust.
After about 10 minutes, pull off the plastic, take your tea bags out, lay them out to dry.

*Rusty Water - If you don’t have any “rusty bits” of metal, you need to make some. Here’s how I do it:

Gather pieces of metal that will fit in a glass jar or plastic container with a lid.
Put the metal bits in the container and cover with half white vinegar and half water.
Let sit for about a week. Shake it gently once in a while.
When the pieces show rust, lay them out on an old cookie sheet. Don’t throw out the rusty vinegar. It can be used over and over. Mark the jar to show what’s in the container.
The more you use the bits for rusting the tea bags, the rustier they’ll get.
When using vinegar, please do safely. Wear a mask and protective gloves.