#unknown maker

Tea came to me entirely stripeless, aside from a couple of incredibly faint wisps of black paint on the fur as the only clue to the stripes' positions. You can slightly see it over the top of their butt here...

Though the stripes were originally black, I really love Tea's pale, faded appearance, so I decided to make their new stripes look faded too.

Using all the faint traces I could spot as a guide, I marked out the positions with some chalk. I used an alcohol marker to apply a little colour at a time, then immediately wiped it away with a tissue to smudge it. I built up the subtle pinky brown colour gradually.

Tea had some dodgy teeth! The old felt was pulled to shreds.

I managed to push a couple of pieces back together to find their original triangle shape, so I had a go at gluing it back into one piece by soaking it in PVA + water and squeezing it as it dried. Looked kinda funny.

Well, in the end it didn't really work... So I just used the tooth as a template to make them two new glue-stiffened felt teeth instead (I decided not to replace the odd middle top tooth).

Here's a closer look at Tea's faded fur! Like with fellow sun-faded thylacine Vanilla, you can see a more sandy brown colour at the bottom of creases in the fur while the rest has faded to a peachy pinkish tone (that looks like milky tea, I think). The white areas even look a little yellower originally. I think their fur is just lovely.

Speaking of fur creases, I found a lot of weird little black specks hiding in Tea's seams, and spent a while brushing and picking them all out. I eventually realised they must've been flecks of the plastic coating from the fake leather material of their nose, which is only a woven fabric backing now (shoutout to Lake for recognising the material, haha). While I was removing the top tooth I had a peek at the inside of the nose seams, and sure enough there was still a hint of black shiny material in there. Anyway, I think their pale grey nose is sweet and matches their faded self very well!