National Hot Tea Day: How to Paint with Tea

Join us in celebrating National Hot Tea Day, January 12th! Today we decided to celebrate National Hot Tea Day by painting with tea. Most kids enjoy creating and crafting, especially when it is something that is out of the ordinary and different. At first, my kids couldn’t understand how to paint with tea but once we got going, they really enjoyed it.

Paint with Tea

In order to do something in honor of National Hot Tea Day, we decided to make some crafts. Initially, I planned to have the kids color a page and then tear the edges and stain it with tea like an old dated paper. My kids were not quite on the same page as me. They kept asking to paint with tea. So, I decided to improvise and see if we could truly paint with tea?

This was an experiment for me, as much as it was for them. We do have some fruit tea as well as black tea in the house. We know that our fruit tea does tend to turn more of a red or orange color and we were hopeful it would produce different results.

Experimenting with Tea

We took a small amount of warm but not overly hot water and let the tea bag steep. We only had the patience to let it sit for a minute before we started to dive in. We quickly noticed that there were differences in colors. Our fruit tea was both a dark red and a light red, while the black tea was well tea colored.

While painting, we found that if we painted the colors faded quickly but instead if we dabbed the paint it left the color behind. This became more of a pointillism, small tiny dots on the paper. The color started out vibrant but faded and dried without much color at all. What we did find most interesting though was that while it did dry without much color, there was enough variation. We were able to see the differences in what we colored. Some of the reds dried much darker than the black tea.

Another fun craft that could be adapted for the season: sun-catchers.