Waxing My Tea Bags

When waxing my tea bags I always prepare what tea bags I am going to use and what wonderfulness I am going to put inside them. For my ongoing project I chose to experiment with circular tea bags. I decided to use circular ones because I usually use the original shape teabags- rectangular or square whereas I wanted to try something different. I then decided I wanted to use dry flower petals inside my teabags.

To begin with i made a small incision into the tea bag as I wanted to remove the tea however I did not want it to be noticeable. 

I then poured out the tea into a small wooden box so that I can recycle the tea in the future (maybe use it for something else within this project).

I made sure that each tea bag I emptied was left with a small amount of tea in the bottom as I wanted my tea bag to still look realistic and earthy. 

Once I had emptied the tea that I wanted gone, I began to pop a few dry flower petals into the tea bag (I always make sure I add more than one thing into my teabaga as I want them to look full and not simplistic).

This is what my tea bag looked like when I had inserted the dry flower petals.

Whilst I emptied and filled more tea bags I switched on my wax melter making sure that I did not turn the temperature weel more than 4 notches as when it reaches a certain temperature it begins to bubble and make a sizzling noise, also if it reaches this stage the wax can burn through the tea bags. I added paraffin wax pellets to the melter and within a few minutes the wax was at boiling point, ready to use.

I rolled out some tin foil into a plastic tray as I wanted to keep my work surface protected from the wax, I then layed a tea bag on to the foil. Using a spoon I scooped some of the boiling wax and poured it over my tea bag.

If the wax did not cover the whole tea bag I would just add more melted wax.

Once the tea bag was completely covered in the melted wax I quickly picked it up using my nails only. (If you do not have long nails like me or you are not confident with this technique I advise to use thin tweezers. Make sure you do this as quickly as possible as the wax begins to dry as soon as it leaves the wax melter and the more wax applied the less transparent it becomes. Too much wax can clog up the tea bag.

This is what my circular teabag looked like. 

Once I was able to handle the wax tea bag without marking it, I layed it out on some paper to fully harden up. After being pleased with the outcome of this tea bag I began doing some more, repeating the same process. Not every tea bag should look the same as they are each unique and beautiful however they turn out.