100 Days: Tea Tin Time

A lot of floral work has been going on (tease below), but here's a quickie post on a bonus prop just made. It's an old-fashioned red metal tin that will help clutter the tea table in Rana's cottage next to the white porcelain teapot and freshly picked cups (!) The tea bags are miniature versions of Paul's current favorite. I dried his out for several mornings, opened up the little cloths and took 2/3rds of the loose tea out, cut down the stained cloth and retied them with string that had their ply reduced to fit the scale. I hope you'll join Rana for a cup as soon as it's ready.

I used plastic bottles from our recycle bin, cut down with a small hand saw to get their curves. Rolled metal edges were added by carefully gluing different gauges of wire. I made one but it wasn't large enough, so I made another a bit larger and decided to make it operate like a real tea tin with an inner and outer lid. Had to make these a second time out of metal as the cardboard version no longer fit back together after the thickness of a coat of paint.

I went back and forth with finishes, black, red, metallics of all kinds. Seriously. All the metallics in the house, even shiny gold foil at one point. What finally worked for me was to cover the entire container in ceramics finishing, wax-based Luster Paste in a warm red gold (bought every color in New York years ago they are really especially gorgeous in person.) And then painted over that layer, leaving the rolled edges gold, with flat red acrylic. I gave the jars a patina with diluted charcoal gray/black wash to simulate oxidation and wear.

The earth laughs in flowers --e. e. cummings

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