By Jessica Wilson
Wanna give your valentine a sweet cuppa lurve? All you have to do is create your own dazzling wee tea bag full of goodness. Here’s how!
Materials
Tiny trinkets, baubles, and bits
Paper scraps
Pens and/or pencils
String, embroidery thread, or yarn
Staple and stapler, or a needle and thread
White tissue paper, vellum, or clean unused tea bag
Glue stick, double stick tape, or glue
Ruler
Scissors
Sewing machine (optional)
Directions
Step 1: The first thing you will need to do is assemble the wee trinkets you want to fill your tea bag with. Think tiny dried flowers, charms, buttons, sequins, and/or candy. You can also write out a lurve note on a long, tiny scrap of paper that you roll up and tie like a message in a bottle. Think small and simple. You don’t need much, as you are going to need to fit it all in a tea bag, a tea-bag-sized tea bag even. Put all your trinkets in a pretty dish to keep them in one place and to use as inspiration.
Step 2: Gather your materials for the tea bag itself. The easiest way to make your tea bag is to carefully dissect an existing one. To dissect, simply remove the wee staple at the top of the bag, unfold, and dump out the tea. Brew it up using an infuser or add it to your compost — just don’t let it go to waste! Now you have an empty bag ready to fill.
Step 3: If you wish to make your bag, you will need white tissue paper or vellum: something fairly transparent so that your valentine gets a peek at the lovely bits inside. Cut your paper into a rectangle that is 3½” by 5½”. This will fold into a wee tea-bag-sized packet. If you wish to go larger, go for it, but keep these proportions in mind. You can also use pattern tissue or red vellum to jazz up your “tea.”
Step 4: Open up your rectangle and fold the long edges of your paper inwards so that they meet in the middle with less than a ¼” overlap. Glue under the top flap to keep it closed, and anchor it with clothespins or paperclips. Make sure the glue only holds the ends together and does not seep through to the remaining parts of the paper. Once dry, fold it in half, bottom to top.
Step 5: Fill each side of your wee tea bag, making sure you keep your fold on the bottom. Leave about ¼” room at the top so that you can fold the corners in.
Step 6: Fold your corners in, then fold the remaining tiny top flap down. Staple or stitch a small length of yarn, string, or twine to the top of your tea bag. You may need to reinforce it with a drop of glue. It all depends on how heavy your little bag is. If you are repurposing a “real” tea bag, you can reuse that string. Your resulting bag should be about 2″ by 3″.
Step 7: For your tag, cut out a small strip of paper 2¼” by ¾”. Write a lurve note if you like and fold in half to make a squarish shape. Staple or stitch the other end of the string. You can make your tea tag more tea-baggish by using a regular-sized hole punch to punch out the top corners. Ta-da, a lovely tea bag of lurve!
Step 8: Add the finishing touches. You can present this to your valentine in a pretty little tea cup or you can make a tiny tea envelope like the real deal. Gather your paper scraps and such and pop your bag into a happy little home. To do so, cut out a piece of paper about 3″ by 6″. Decorate to your heart’s content and fold in half, happy side facing out. Stitch or glue up the sides, slide the tea bag into the envelope, and stitch loosely closed with a small stitch for easy opening.
Make a set of these so that your valentine can continue to enjoy their tea! Happy Valentine’s Day!
About the Author:
Jessica Wilson is most happily known as ‘jek in the box’ and spends most of her time crafting it up and taking pictures. She can often be found standing on benches over on Flickr and creating all sorts of kiddie crafts on her blog scrumdilly-do! She lives a life of scrumdillydilly and loves to share.
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