Recycled Tea Bag Art

While reusing a tea bag as many times as humanly possible can be perceived as bordering on absolute cheapo-ville, those who are still interested in making the most of their spent bags can just as easily compost them along with their kitchen scraps...

Then again, you might want to just hang them to dry on an eensie weensie line with miniature clothespins and turn them into a rainbow of colorful eco-friendly canvases as the South African artistic collective Original TBag Designs does.

Exactly how does that work? After drying the bags thoroughly, artists painstakingly empty the tea leaves out of each packet and reserve the papery shell for their works of art which will ultimately grace walls, refrigerators (in the form of magnets), coasters, journals, clothing and various other items.

Aside from the dedication that they clearly must have to recycle all of those tiny little bags, their efforts are even more notable because they are funding a better life for themselves -- in fact, one artist was actually able to purchase a house with the profits that she earned from her tea bag creations.

We definitely tend to take for granted how the smallest items can become so much more with just a little creative effort -- I am among the guilty who would have never imagined that I could do anything with old tea bags beside compost them.

After seeing Original TBag Designs' remarkable range of recycled crafts and practical household objects, I'm really convinced that there is no reason for any one of us to ever use a garbage pail again!