Butterfly Peaflower Tea mini tutorial

#DoodlewashMay2021 prompts: Blue Skies & Eating.

I was drinking some Dried Butterfly Peaflower Tea this morning and wondering what to do about the May Doodlewash prompt, since I was already a day behind. And remembered that Dried Butterfly Peaflower Tea makes a beautiful blue dye and thought Duh!

You can get the tea in powder form, which I’ve never tried. I have some empty tea bags I use, which I fill with a couple tablespoons of the dried flowers. After I drink the tea I use the bag to dye some paper (it will dye quite a bit). I through away the flowers, but keep the tea bags to use in other mixed media work.

WARNING! Butterfly Peaflower is used as a natural clothing dye. It will wash off your fingers (eventually), but may not come out of clothing, furniture or carpet!

If not drinking the tea, you could just use a few of the dried flowers. This is what they look like before they are wet.

I used two pieces of paper for this tutorial. One is Hahnemühle Agave (3 x 4 in) and the other is a piece of Hahnemühle Hot Press Collection paper, cut from a larger piece (approx 4 x 6) inch. Just to add a little interest, I decided to set the smaller piece on top of the larger so some of the white of the paper would be left.

I start smashing the bag onto the paper. You can see how much liquid there is.

I didn’t worry about liquid seeping between the cards. It’s more interesting if some of it does.

If you smash one of the flowers onto the paper you’ll get bits of darker blue in the shape of the flower. If you crumble little bits of the blue petal you can get little specks of blue. You have to smash them though.

Timing counts for some effects. If you leave the teabag string (or other absorbent objects) on the paper at the right time, you’ll get a lighter color under it.

You can let the tea dry for a while, and then add more color by smashing the teabag or flowers onto the paper again. You can repeat this over and over to get interesting shapes on the paper. Since I was working small, I only did this a couple of times. I did color more than one set of papers.

Now I got carried away and forgot to capture what the dye jobs looked like before I added pen and gouache. I did still have another set that I did though, so you can get an idea. The scan on these came out a bit more purple than they are in real life.

Once the paper was thoroughly dry, I used technical pen and permanent marker on the larger piece.

Did you know that dragons like to eat toasted marshmallows?

On the smaller 3 x 4 inch card I used gouache to paint my blue skies with flamingoes.

Oh, and if you were wondering – the tea has a very light and delicate taste. It’s hard to describe. It’s not grassy, not floral, not tea. Lol. Sorry, I can’t do better, but if you do buy some and don’t like it, at least it’s still an art supply!

100% Pure Butterfly Pea Flower Tea

Tinkee Tea Disposable Filter bags

Zebra Pen Zensations Technical Pen, Assorted Point Sizes, Black Ink, 3-Count

Zebra PM-701 Stainless Steel Permanent Marker

Hahnemuhle The Collection Watercolor Pad 140lb Cold Press 9X12

Hahnemuhle Agave Watercolor Pad 12 Sheet 8×10.5cm (3×4″)

ZenArt Black Tulip Brushes