It’s true. You can recycle anything, including tea bags.

I know cooled tea bags on your eyes provide relief. Now it seems that, in Mandela Park near Cape Town in South Africa, dried tea bags are being used as a medium for creating art. The bags are dried in the sun, the tea leaves removed and the tea bag is ironed. Then the real work begins.

Local artists paint the bags with different designs and put them together to form the finished products that they sell. These include some beautiful coasters, magnets, wine bags, place mats, trays, notepads and even jewelry.

All this began as an effort to combat the poverty in an “informal settlement” that consists of homes made with bits of tin and wood cobbled together. No schooling to speak of, at least no formal schooling. But then, through trial and error, the Original T-Bag Designs group was formed and they began to successfully sell their tea bag projects. So successfully that the project now supports 125 people including 10 people with disabilities who do sanding on the artwork.

They even received a private commission for a bigger piece of art for Oprah’s Leadership Academy. You can see the piece displayed in a picture on the front page of their site at http://www.originaltbagdesigns.com/. If you are a lover of all things tea, consider adding some tea bag art to your collection from Original T-Bag Designs.