I belong to a lovely FB page, Sketchbooks and Experiments for Textiles, full of talented artists, where there is a July challenge to post something daily. I won’t bore you (there is a you reading this somewhere, right?) with all of them (I certainly haven’t managed daily contributions!), but here are some experiments I did on making the background with tea leaves or ground coffee:

top: silver tip white
lower L: blueberry black
lower R: Moroccan green

I wetted the paper, sprinkled the tea leaves, then sprayed them with water. After it dried, it looked like this:

A whole page, ready to use:

Blueberry Black Tea-stained background

Finished piece:

Stamped with weeds, dipped in watercolor

Same technique for the background, only using ground coffee instead, then sprayed watercolors around a stencil:

Coffee-stained paper, watercolor

Next, using a piece of cotton fabric:

Coffee-stained

Fabric wrapped, soaking in wine

It just looks sort of old and dirty, though more interesting in real life than in the photo. Perhaps another dyeing session, Shibori-style?