How to Tea Stain Wood

I made a wine box toy box for Blitzkrieg. I wanted to kick up the pale color with a pet safe wood stain. Blitzkrieg already has enough onhis plate fighting cancer; I don’t want to add to it by using a wood stain containing questionable ingredients.
 

Fortunately, I have a lovely honey colored pet safe wood stain in my kitchen cupboard – tea.

I tea stained book pages and used them as wallpaper in my bathroom remodel. Sometimes I tea stain fabric when I make historical costumes.

I also tea stain my pajamas because I am Clumsy Grand Supreme in the morning pre-gallon o' caffeine.

Why not stain wood with tea? Tool Girl experimented with homemade wood stains with interesting results. Let’s try it.

How to Make Tea Wood Stain

My appearance contracts specifically states that Lisa has to put a picture of me in this post because she is making a dog related project. Man, how I love my agent! (Thanks Husband.)

You will need:

Water

Black tea (I used regular grocery store tea)

Stove

Saucepan

Make it:

1. Fill the saucepan with water and bring the water to boil on the stove.

2. How much tea you use to make tea wood stain depends upon the size of your sauce pan, how much water you put it in, and how dark you want your stain to be. I used 24 tea bags to make my tea wood stain. Boil the tea for 30 minutes.

 Tea stain slurry

Note: Tool Girl used loose black tea for her wood stain and boiled it into a slurry. I opened the teabags and dumped the loose tea into the water to boil my version. The tea leave slit made staining my project a bit messy. Next time I might try leaving the tea in the tea bags.

3. After the tea stain cools, brush the tea stain onto your project and allow the wood to absorb the tea stain. The first coat I brushed on the tea stain, let it sit, and wiped off the excess as I would with a conventional wood stain. The color was not a rich honey color  I wanted. For the following 3-4 coats, I skipped the last step of wiping off the excess tea stain.

Before

After

Tea wood stain will darken over time. Honey color now or deeper honey color later I like the results either way.

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