Further experimentation

M Y  O W N  I D E A S

After previously experimenting lots I was about to give up and move onto something else as I was happy with what I had produced. However, today I came home to find 4 boxes of unused fruit tea about to go in the bin and I couldn't resist the temptation of more experimenting. 

I had 4 different flavours of fruit tea available to use, these were fennel and nettle, summer berries, cinnamon and lemon and honey. 

I used 4 cups of hot water (a colour per cup) and put several bags of each colour into the cups to allow the colours to be the most vibrant they possibly could. I found that the cinnamon cup and the berries cup turned the same colour and so I was left with only three colours; cerise, green and yellowy brown.  However, I accidentally dropped spilt some water onto a pink one and I found that it turned lilac as shown in the image below

I dried them thoroughly and then took the tea out of them. This same week I had ordered a book which I received and was water damaged and so I couldn't use it, this gave me the idea to fill the tea bags with the images from the book as it was going to be thrown away. 

I ended up with 54 tea bags which I was really pleased with and glad I experimented. I then stitched them all together. 

Collecting Data

E V E R Y D A Y  L I F E 

For the new sampling unit I found it difficult to put my finger on what I thought of as data, and then I realised that data is really everything. Everything we think and do can be considered data. From this perspective I then decided to base my project on collections of data. 

I began the unit by collecting data from everyday life. I chose to collect all of the wasted tea bags in my house each day. I did this because it was interesting to me that they are normally thrown away and I wanted to recycle them in some way. 

I had heard about tea bag waxing before but never tried it myself, and so with my collections  I started to experiment and found myself with some really pleasing outcomes. 

This waxed tea bag below was the first one I produced and I filled the inside with things I was going to throw away or little things i found. Inside this tea bag, was a long piece of thread, a cut out bit of card from the packaging of a desert and a piece of music paper from a book that my sister was throwing out. 

I experimented with random things I was going to throw away and tried this in circle and rectangle shapes. 

After much more experimentation I found what I liked and decided to produce some more samples this time with both used tea bags and unused tea bags.