That's Crafty Challenge: Summer collage on a tea bag

I don't often take part in challenges, but I was inspired to enter this month's challenge by That's Crafty. The subject is 'summer' and I had just the perfect project in mind. I absolutely love beach themes with sun, sand, sea and, of course, beach huts!

I chose a used and empty tea bag as my canvas. It's the same width as an ATC, just a little shorter - perfect for a small collage. I added a layer of heavy gesso with a palette knife to partially seal the surface, otherwise the paint would just run through it. I painted the sand with Golden's quinacridone nickel azo gold mixed with gesso and colored the sky teal blue. The beach hut and the circle for the sun were die-cut. I also added some stamping and tiny, real sea shells that I had picked up on holiday years ago. The collage was finished off with some found words cut from book text. I'm still amazed how the right words always jump out at me - it only took a couple of minutes to find these and they were all on the same page!

Tea bags have such a great texture to work on and I love the little border where the two layers are sealed - I always make sure that the border remains intact when I cut the bags apart. It's a good idea to iron them before applying paint if they're too crumpled. Here's my little summer scene and some close-ups to show all the details:

I really enjoyed working on this mini project and I'm planning to make a whole series of tea bag collages. They are really very similar to ATCs and it's probably best to work on more than one at a time and display them together, but this is all I had time for today. I'll call it my prototype. I have plenty more beautifully stained tea bags to work with! 

Thanks for your visit! Happy summer!

This challenge is open until the 4th of July for anyone to join.