An artist has added a touch of magic to used tea bags by painting scenes inspired from Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings on them. Caroline West, 50, from Waterlooville, Hampshire, has been painting on used tea bags since August 2023 as a way of turning something that is typically discarded into “something beautiful”. Hoping to capture the enchantment many feel when reading or watching fantasies, she decided to paint “iconic” characters, places, moments and structures from both Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings on her unique canvas of choice.
“I’m an avid reader and I’m so inspired by how a storyteller can weave an entire world into a book, so I just wanted to see if I could capture that feeling in miniature, on a tea bag,” Mrs West told the PA news agency. “The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are just iconic so I wanted to do a limited edition collection of fan art.”. For the Harry Potter series, Mrs West created seven painted tea bags which feature memorable aspects from the J K Rowling fantasy book series including the Hogwarts Express, the Sorting Hat and Hogwarts.
Her The Lord of the Rings tea bags – of which there are also seven – show Gollum, the eye of a dragon and silhouettes of characters from the fantasy series walking up a mountain. It took roughly several hours to create each painted tea bag and the process began with used Yorkshire Tea tea bags being dried out. She then cut them up, scrapped out all the tea and ironed them flat. The edges were then taped, the tea bags were placed on backing paper, a base layer was applied and then she used acrylic paint to create the different scenes.
She said she thinks the series’ are both so popular to this day because they offer a sense of “escapism” from the “hustle and bustle” of everyday life. “I think reading the books or watching the movies is just a way of getting out of normal everyday life and escaping into a completely different world where anything’s possible,” she said. “I grew up reading The Lord of the Rings when I was a teenager so there’s also a sense of nostalgia.”.
