T Stands For Fossils

You have seen what I did with teabags when I dyed fabric at last week's T date.

Some of you may

have also seen that I dyed lace and fabric using hibiscus tea leaves.

Finally this is one I dyed using the last of the hibiscus tea and leftover coffee.

Now it's time to deal with the tea leaves.   Normally I would compost them by placing them around my potted plants in winter and around my plants in my veggie garden the rest of the year.  But today, I am going to recycle them a different way.  I will be making fossils. 

I copied this recipe off a web site I visited last autumn thinking this would make an excellent Christmas gift.  I never got around to making these for Christmas and could no longer find the web site on which I originally found the recipe.

However, I planned to change the recipe in order to use the spent tea leaves I removed from the tea bags I used last week, as well as the hibiscus tea leaves, now dry, also from another post last week.

It never dawned on me there would not be enough tea leaves to fill the 1 cup measuring cup.   I ended up having to supplement the tea with my coffee grounds.  It took three days to finally fill the measuring cup with a full cup of both tea and coffee.

Mixing all the ingredients was a pain, and took forever.   Instead of cold coffee, I used my leftover hibiscus tea (after I removed the fabric and lace, of course).

Then I think am sure I messed up, because the "dough" was so stiff, I added some of my coffee.   This turned into a gooey mess.  And people wonder why I don't bake!!!

The instructions indicated I was to knead the dough, then flatten it out onto the waxed paper.   I had planned to use the glass jar to cut the fossils into circles, then decided I actually preferred the organic look better.

I was fairly certain the fossil dough was too sticky to handle,

but patience isn't one of my virtues.

This one was holding up fairly well.

Mid-afternoon, the pieces had dried enough I was able to press the shells firmly into the balls of dough.

Some of these turned out better than others.

The round shell (sorry, I'm not familiar with shell names) was pressed into the top left fossil in the above photo, as well as the left one below it.  That one also got the fan shell, too.  It would be at least 36-48 hours (according to the instructions) before they were completely dry.  But they were already looking like fossils to me.

Imagine my surprise after these had set for 36 hours, how much the color had lightened the "fossils."  The one above is my favorite, and more on it soon.

I can now understand why the instructions were to flatten the dough.  It looks a bit too much like a crater rather than a fossilized rock.

Even though theses were still not completely dry, they were looking more and more like the fossils I expected.

Once again, this is my favorite, BUT, please do NOT use your heat tool to force them to dry, especially if your fossils are sitting on wax paper.

The one on the bottom right is completely dry, so you can see how the drying process lightens them.

For Day 17 of 22 leading up to bEARTHday, I recycled used tea leaves from tea bags and loose leaf tea, as well as hibiscus tea I had dyed my fabric with.  I also repurposed some shells and turned them into pressed fossils.  Because I recycled something, I'm linking to my friends at Try it on Tuesday where their theme for the next few hours is Recycle Something. 

Now it's your turn to share a drink related post.  It can be photos, a place you visited, movies, postcards, teapots, mugs, a drink cup, books, sketches, mixed media, drawings, paintings, tags, teabags, scrapbooking, or any other art that is digital, hybrid, or traditional, as long as it in some way relates back to a drink, any drink. Regardless, please share below and Bleubeard and I, along with the rest of the T gang will be by to visit.  Old photos are acceptable because they may be taken any time.