I get asked a lot of questions about how to do things around the shop. My experience is candles and scented products. But I have come across others that do a wonderful job of other types of crafts and I also like to cruise the net looking for info to see how others go about doing things. So, although I have not tried these procedures for myself, I have heard and seen the results of others doing them.

Primitive decor has a palate of darker colors.. the colors you get over time. Blues and reds become muted, black gets more charcoal and anything white developes an darker antique patina. So, to get that age-old look instantly on fabric, you can tea or coffee stain.

Tea staining is the less extreme of the two methods. It will give you lightly stained, yellowish-brown areas on your fabric. Different teas will result in different tints and tones in the final product. Standard black teas will give a soft brown or cream color to your fabric, while some of the herbal teas leave more of a red tone.

 To create tea dye you will need to bring to boil enough water to soak your fabric in. Then add 1 tea bag to every half a cup of hot water and let it brew for about 10 minutes. Soak the fabric you wish to age in the bucket of tea. Swish it around every so often if you want a smooth textured finish. Leave it without moving it much for a mottled finish.

When the fabric has soaked “enough” pull it out and rinse it under cool water. You will loose a lot of the color doing this, so if it isn’t dark enough to suit you, soak it some more. Be aware that when the fabric dries it will be slightly lighter as well. It’s been found a medium light tan color can be achieved after about an hour. A richer tan can be achieved with an overnight soaking.

 Another method of staining fabrics is to sponge them. Make up the stain as before, then using an old sponge, soak up some of the tea dye and blot it onto the fabric. This gives a distinctive mottled look to your fabric. You could build up layers using different strengths of tea. The more tea dye you use, the darker the stain will be. This process gets the fabric pretty wet. You can lay the fabric out to dry, run a fan over it or bake it in the oven at about 200 degrees for a few minutes to dry it. Reapply additional coats of tea dye as necessary to get the desired color.

 Tea dye is only for natural fabrics like cotton and linen. Tea dye is also semi-permanent. What this means is that while it will not wash out easily, you can usually remove it with bleach. It may also fade in sunlight. It is not suggested for use on items (such as clothing) that will be washed regularly as modern detergents are designed to remove the tea stain.

For a richer and darker color, try coffee dye. A recipe I found was mixing 5 tablespoons of instant coffee crystals in half a cup of hot water. They also added a few drops of vanilla extract to add a bit of scent to the mix. Other recipes throw in a tablespoon of cinnamon for the aroma as well as the texture it gives.  To stain with the coffee dye, use the same sponge-blotting method described above for the tea dye. When the piece has the desired color it can then be baked in the oven. You can also spray tea or coffee dye on with a spray bottle, or dry your fabric outside in the sun on a warm day.

Since I had to get this information from other sources, here are the web sites I found the most information on and they are worth a look for other things as well:

Primitive Folk Art

Kiss My Crafts

Cinnamon Sticks and Candle Wicks ~ for the doll pictured

I awoke this afternoon to find ladybugs all over the house! Hundreds of them. Soon, they were all over me.

Ladybug butt

They’re supposed to mean good luck, right? Maybe I’ve hit the jackpot.

Besides photographing critters, here’s what else I’ve been doing:

Dyeing T-shirt yarn with tea! (Looks like weird pasta, huh?) I’m taking Stefanie Japel’s upcycled T-shirt yarn class online. Very fun. Been cutting up shirts into yarn and dyeing them. Here’s how my first batch of tea-stained yarn turned out:

Stack o' yarn

That’s all for now …

It’s easy to make that claim when the SD card reader has bit the dust and there are no photographs to prove otherwise!  Our eggs are colored and ready for hiding.  Basket goodies need to be left on the table for the boys, but I need to wait until they’ve gone to bed.  Seems we’re all night owls tonight.  I’m lucky that my 12 year old wanted to color eggs this year.  We skipped last year because no one was really interested, and I was a bit sad.  Today my older son’s girlfriend joined us for the tradition.  We did things a little differently this year.  Instead of using the tablets — all that was left yesterday was Hannah Montana — we used plain old food coloring.  Well . . . it was NEON colors.  Since the kids are older, they were able to mix the colors they wanted.  We ended up heavy on sea tones, but I do think these are the brightest eggs we’ve ever done.  We had some rubberband stripes and some interesting designs drawn with the white crayon.  When all of the eggs were colored, we attempted for the first time to blow out a few for tea staining.  A couple that were man-handled ended up down the drain, but I did manage to successfully blow out four eggs, and my son’s girlfriend emptied the fifth one.  I added some vinegar to the boiling tea, and the stain turned out beautiful.  I’ve been painting a basket to use as a big “nest,” which I’ll fill with tulle, old tea-stained lace, a baby shoe and the eggs.  I think it’ll be great in the garden area I have planned when I expand my space May 1!  I may even blow out and stain some more eggs to go in the basket on an old bike that I plan to fill with shredded sheet music.  Projects, projects, projects!  Oh, how I love them.  Have a sweet Easter!

I found these lovely drawings inspired by tea stains on the ‘Tea Sketches’ group on Flickr

Rustic Stocking with Hand-Painted Trees

This quaint, rustic stocking features
tea-stained muslin to give it an antique
look and feel. Hand-painted fir trees
on main body of stocking, accompanied
by red and green gingham accent piece
and hand-stitched cross-hatch
pattern. Fully lined.
Measures 19″ H x 6.5″ W. $50

Please eMail RusticPaintedTrees@WordsMadeEasy.com to purchase.

One of the best things about gift-giving is finding the perfect gift for that special someone. You probably have people in your life like my niece, Samantha. She starts counting off the days before her birthday a good two months out – and we all receive an itemized Christmas wish list well ahead of Black Friday. Then there are others, like my dad, who was one of the most difficult people on the planet to find gifts for. I was going to say “shop for,” but I usually wound up making his gifts, all of which he appreciated much more than he ever would have most store-bought gifts.

Customized gifts are probably the best way to show someone you really care, and a Christmas stocking is a great thing to customize. They make delightful gifts, even for the person who has “everything.”

What’s the best way to customize a Christmas stocking? The better you know the recipient, the easier this will be. Start by making a list of his/her favorite things:

• hobbies
• movies
• food
• music
• sports teams

Then think of the other details you know about them:

• career
• family
• hometown
• ethnic origin
• politics
• religion
• school/alma mater

Something should shake out from this list to give you an idea or a place to start.

A few examples of personalized stockings I’ve made include:

A stocking for a friend’s world-traveler mom. I found stencils of various modes of transportation and cut fabric which I then appliqued to a denim stocking.

A stocking for an actor friend. I created appliques of the masks of comedy and tragedy out of red courderoy, which I laid over a white faux fur stocking.

That same actor friend had me customize a stocking for a Frank Sinatra fan, which was great fun to make. We found pictures of LP records, blue eyes, a hat and cane, and some of Sinatra’s  most famous song titles, which we then made into iron-on transfers and affixed to tea-stained muslin.

Some of the most fun stockings I’ve created have been for dog lovers…and sometimes even the dogs themselves.

Of course, I’ve also done stockings for all kinds of sports fans, from the Arizona Diamondbacks to the Indianapolis Colts. Creating a customized Christmas stocking for that someone special should be a fun experience that gets your creative juices flooding. If you’re stuck and you need help with ideas, or you’d like me to customize and personalize a stocking for you, please e-mail me at Customize@WordsMadeEasy.com. I’ll help you brainstorm or I’ll craft the perfect stocking that will have your loved one oohing and ahing till New Year’s. Why give another boring box of chocolate or Best Buy gift certificate, when you can give a gift that will be cherished as an heirloom for years to come?

An interesting article in The Guardian newspaper here. Just cast your mind back to the fuss over Sharon Stone’s comments, the storm in a teacup over the tea stains advert, the fiasco of the poster showing Tib@tan monks on a rollercoaster, and a few other recent ‘insults’ to the Chinese nation. In every instance someone apologised unreservedly for each of these slurs against the Middle Kingdom and there was some kind of step-down – but why? Ms Stone’s comments were foolish, but did they matter? She is an actress not an intellect; did anyone genuinely expect intelligent comment? The slogan used by Procter and Gamble to advertise their Ariel detergent employed an idiom commonly used in English, ‘all the teas in China’, which somehow came to be seen as an insult to China. And the [mis]interpretation dreamt up by the Chinese blogger who stirred the brown stuff to set off the furore over the Coca-Cola poster is so stunningly far-fetched it borders on the surreal. Isn’t it time this great nation learned to accept that not everyone in the world is going to say nice things about it, that not every reference to ‘China’ amounts to a slight upon their motherland and, most important of all, learn to discriminate between trivia and serious comment?

Ma Jian argues that constantly apologising is not the way to deal with these over-reactions. According to the teachings of Kongzi there are three types of good friends and three types of not so good friends and Ma argues we are rapidly setting ourselves amongst the unreliable ones, but that is only part of the story. Not only are we pandering to a bunch of over-sensitive, nationalist halfwits but we are doing ourselves even fewer favours by encouraging them to become ever more vociferous and demanding. By repeatedly telling them, in effect, that we are wrong and then giving in to their demands are we not making future dealings with the Chinese people, and government, more difficult? If there was some truth in the complaints made an apology or change of stance would be in order but that has not been the case, and caving in to hysteria does no-one any good.

As a general rule people, and governments, respect those who are honest, they have more respect for those who are strong and more still for those both honest and strong. The Chinese people and government have the right to hold their own views on the world, about everything from the cosmos down to which is the best football team, and they also have the right to know that there are other viewpoints in existence in the world but must accept that not all of them are parallel with their own. If they are to regard us with respect, just as we should with them, there has to be a reason for that but our present kow-towing is not it.

The PRC government has a point when it says that it is unacceptable for outsiders to interfere with matters which are purely internal to another nation – and by that I mean no-one has any more right to dictate what sort of posters are pinned on hoardings in other countries than they have to dictate what colour socks we wear.

Related posts: The Hurt Feelings Of The Chinese on China Rises

After I posted the item about the tea stain remover [yesterday's post] I did a search, using the slogan, to see if I could find who might have instigated this heinous campaign. The results were disappointing with only this site and QQ News returned with the full slogan, all other hits were irrelevant. Out of curiosity I repeated the exercise today and was presented with 117 hits, each containing the slogan. Here are a few of them

http://rnews.baidu.com/n?cmd=8&page=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.people.com.cn%2FGB%2F40606%2F7197050.html&pn=1&clk=rrel&cls=housenews&where=toppage
http://cache.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/sport/1/128149.shtml
http://fuxing.bbs.cctv.com/viewthread.php?tid=11778270
http://4979787.blog.hexun.com/18887151_d.html
http://jiansuo.cns.com.cn:6666/search.wct?channelid=5940
http://www.0086.ie/html/50/n-3750.html
http://bbs.tiexue.net/post_2762555_1.html
http://military.club.china.com/data/thread/1011/2007/93/96/6_1.html
http://duping.net/XHC/list.php?bbs=11
http://315.cctv.com/20080505/103467.shtml

The first on the list is Baidu, listing another 2 further pages of sites, I didn’t investigate these and assumed they will be duplicates of those already found. Most of the others are on Chinese websites and simply reproduce the QQ news item, but others add a few comments. Here are a few selected from the thread of a forum, arguing over the possible meaning of the ad and all of them completely missing the point. Bear in mind these are Google translations so the English is not very good.

Absolutely Yiyushuangguan mean. 现实生活中，china这个词常用么？ In real life, china used the word Mody » 如果一个装饰性的瓷器还说得过去，而喝茶的杯子谁管它叫china? 我听说过have a cup of tea，却没听说过have a china of tea. If a decorative porcelain also justifiable, and the tea cups Who Guanta Jiao china «I’ve heard about have a cup of tea, no one heard of have a china of tea. tea这个东西，本身就很容易联系到中国。 tea this thing in itself can easily link to China. 欧美人喝茶的比例毕竟是少数，如果做广告，更应该说，洗咖啡垢，可乐垢。 Europe and the United States, after all, the proportion of people drinking tea is one of the few, if advertising, should also be said that the scale washing coffee, cola scale. 偏偏选了一个茶垢，真是别有用心。 Unfortunately the election of a tea scale, is an ulterior motive.

再看排版，后面感觉就是Made in China。 Look at publishing, is the feeling behind the Made in China. 是在打击中国制造的东西有污圬。 In the fight against Chinese-made things have sewage masonry. 不知道这个广告是什么时候放上去的，如果是毒玩具毒狗粮那段时间反中国制造的高潮时期，那它100%有反华的意思在里面。 The ads do not know what the time-boost, if the drug is toxic Gouliang toys made in China at that time the anti-climax period, it is 100 percent anti-China mean inside. 更可恶的是，这里字母全都是大写，所以也没办法区别是不是一个专用名词。 More heinous is that here are all in capital letters, so it can not distinguish is not a special term.

The English do not quite understand people not to speak, Procter & Gamble this ad is a shame, for advertising, his advertisements have two customs justice, CHINA can refer to China, was criticized when sophistry can be said that the porcelain, but if they are That the porcelain, the use of cleaner bit too narrow, because the cleaning agents can not just wash porcelain, can also wash the glass. Shing and tea in general is in the cup, porcelain flush toilets is done, but by who heard that Flush toilet to drink tea,
所以正常情况下, 他的这个广告词应该说”除去任何杯中的茶垢”,而不是”除去瓷器中的茶垢”他难以自圆其说的.他这个广告直意是”中国茶可以造成污垢”, 暗讽中国的东西都是污垢. Therefore, under normal circumstances, his words should be said that this ad “cup of tea to remove any scale”, not “get rid of porcelain tea scale,” he difficult to justify. He This ad is intended straight, “Chinese tea can cause dirt” , An Feng of China things are dirt.

. . . . and so it goes on page after page

Another starts with the heading “Westerners also declared war on the Chinese people! ！ !“, the article is pasted below it, and ends “ Brothers, how do we fight again » ？ » ？ » ？ » ？ »”

If the students who reported this to QQ had not been so touchy . . if QQ had used a bit of common sense or employed a competent translator to check the ad out . . if the ‘news’ item had not been published . . . . probably no one would have batted an eyelid.

Am I right in thinking we have an expression which might sum this up, something about a lot of rain in a cup? Or creating a large mound of humous from the labours of a small black animal?

On QQ news is an item of complaint about a bus stop advertisement, found in Ireland. The ad is for a detergent and the slogan makes use of the expression ‘all the tea in China’ – a common idiomatic expression meaning ‘much’ or ‘a lot’ – and reads, “Gets Out Stains Made By All The Teas In China”. I cannot read or make a reliable translation of the QQ item but, using the online Google translator, I gather that some Chinese students living in Tallaght, Ireland [Tallaght, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a suburb of Dublin], have seen the ads and have felt ‘very uncomfortable with them’. There is a hint in the translation that one student suspected that this incident is ‘another disgrace’.

Can I just make sure that I’ve got this right –

• The advertisement is racist as it singles out Chinese tea.
• This has some connection with violence in Tib@t.
• An Irish detergent company is joining in the international conspiracy to slight and slander China.
• The whole business is a joke disgrace.

Click here for the original page; the original wording and an unedited Google translation is below. -

中新网5月5日电 爱尔兰《新岛周报》近日收到一名热心华人投稿，这名华人在爱尔兰Tallagh和市中心多个公交车站发现一则广告，这是一则清洁剂广告，广告主体是一只绿 色的茶杯，在杯子上印着Gets out stains made by all the teas in China(从中国出产的茶都能挑出毛病)。对于该语句的翻译也许有多个版本，但是许多留学生和华侨看到这行字时都非常不舒服，甚至有学生怀疑这是又一起 辱华事件。

由于3月底4月初以来，中国西藏打砸抢烧暴力事件和西方媒体不实报道使得全球华人一致发出抗议的声音，也让许多华人对各类与中国有关的东西都十分敏感，一些华人同胞在看到该广告牌后都觉得“不舒服”。

May 5, Ireland, “the new Island Weekly” recently received an enthusiastic Chinese Contributor, this Chinese city centre in Ireland Tallagh several bus stops and found an ad, this is a cleansing agent advertising, advertising Green is one of the main cup in the cup on Yinzhao Gets out stains made by all the teas in China (from the tea produced in China are singled out problems). For the translation of the statement may have multiple versions, but many students and overseas Chinese saw the lines are very uncomfortable when, or even a student is suspected that this incident, another disgrace.

Since the end of March early April, China’s Tib@t burning of violence and vandalism Western media reports is not the same issue of Chinese people around the world make the voice of protest, many Chinese with the Chinese on all kinds of things are very sensitive, a number of Chinese compatriots on the After seeing the advertisements that are “uncomfortable.”

She always came at dusk, the girl with the hundred birds.
And when she sang, they all remembered the secret dreams that they thought they had forgotten.
.

.Illustration Friday – Memories
.

I’ve tried the rest and this one is

THE BEST!

Sure, there are LOTS of free grubby stain recipes out there, but honestly, you ‘get what you pay for’!  And in the long run, the ingredients you buy for those free recipes cost more than what I recommend, they are more labor intensive to make and they can be sticky and stiNky!

I’ve purchased and tested many of the other stain recipes out there and this one really is the best.

I make a LOT of stained products to sell in our retail store and shows, and this is the only recipe I use.

* No smelly coffee or tea used!

* No other ’stiff and sticky’ kitchen products.

* Make it scented or UNSCENTED!

(Stained muslin doll head shown in photo has one coat of ‘full strength’ solution.  You can make yours darker or lighter.  Unstained one shown for comparison)

Recipe also includes how to’s for:

 -> Making ‘bordered’ tags and cardstock.

-> Making oval bordered cardstock.

-> How to get that ‘mottled watermark’ look on your items if you wish.

-> Buy inexpensive flags and stain them yourself.

Fourteen color pictures with complete instructions.

To purchase this e-book, send $4.00via PayPal to folkartoriginals@yahoo.com  Your e-book, in the form of a password protected Picturetrail album, will be emailied to you within 48 hours of receipt of payment. 

OUR WEBSITE:  http://www.cscrafts.com.aj.html

I found an interesting site online today. Calledwww.tea-stain.com, the site asks, “How do your friends take their tea/coffee /hot chocolate/ herbal nonsense?” If you’re always on the tea run and have to keep asking your colleagues for reminders of their milk and sugar preferences, the tea-stain mat is perfect for you. It’s basically a laminated plastic mat that fits into a tea tray, with set ‘tea-stains’ on the mat for each person on your coffee run, specifying their name, beverage of choice, and milk and sugar quota. 

All you need to do is measure the tea tray your office uses, and choose the size of your desired tea-stain mat from the two options available – one for rectangular trays, which accommodates 8 cups, and one for circular trays which ‘fits’ 7 cups (I’m assuming you can fit less on the tray if tea saucers are used!) 

Tea-stain.com adds that you shouldn’t fret if you only have a handful of hot drink-drinkers, as the extra spots can always be turned into “guest spots for visitors”. The mats are plastic-coated, so the spare or blank spaces can be filled in with dry-wipe markers.

As if that’s not enough, you can also turn the tea-making into a game. How, you ask? It’s quite simple – each tea-ring on the mat has a number. By rolling the optional extra tea-stain eight-sided dice, you can fairly decide whose turn it is to make the tea. There’s also a Facebook ‘Tea-round Randomizer’ application in the pipeline!

As the site is run by enterprising folk in America, they’d like you to pay for the service, so they can clear their student loans. Clever thinking.

If you’re intrigued by the idea, click here for more information!