My other half is completely obsessed with almost any kind of tea you can imagine, so this was a really cute way for me to give him something that I knew he would love without it being ridiculously expensive. I pride myself on giving gifts from the heart. I will admit that I think I was more excited to make and give him this gift than he was about receiving it, but he is part of the male species so I’m not offended by this ;).
To make the Personalised Tea Bag Tags you’ll need:
To start I chose 4 of his favourite kinds of tea.
Next I designed and printed these little tags. They are about 25mm x 50mm. Once they are printed I simply cut them out and folded them in half. I did discover that you should cut the straight edges first then fold it and only after it’s folded should you cut the corners off to ensure that they are exactly the same. I then put a little square of thin double-sided tape (usually found at scrapbooking shops) on each half of the inside.
Then I folded the one end of the tea bag, almost the same way you wrap a present. Folding it here makes it easier to staple the piece of cotton on and it just adds that finished look.
This next part is a little tricky.
First I measured out the cotton so that it would wrap around the tea bag and have the tag hang in front and I left a little extra just in case (you can alway trim it after).
1. Ok, now I made a little loop at one end of the cotton and stapled that onto the folded end of the tea bag, making sure that both ends of the cotton are pointing upwards out of the staple, away from the tea bag.
2. Next I fed the two ends of the string through the loop.
3. I pulled the longer piece of cotton so that it was tight around staple. Then just trimmed the shorter piece so that it looks neat.
I added the personalised tag onto the end of the long piece if cotton by sticking the cotton to the double-sided tape and then folding it over so that the cotton is in between the paper tag.
You have yourself a personalised tea bag!
But I’m not done yet.
To make the Tea Box:
Despite having many skills, woodwork is not one of them… yet ;). I got this perfect wooden box from PNA in Greenstone. I then painted it with some paints I already had. The brown is a sample wall paint and the beige is actually a fabric paint. I did a few coats of the brown to get a solid covering.
To get the word ‘tea’ on there I downloaded a cool Chinese-looking font since all the teas I used are Chinese. *I downloaded the font from FONTSPACE, my favourite site to get fonts from. There are millions to choose from and they are all free!
I then found a spare piece of vinyl lying around the office and did a cut-out of the word on the cutting machine (I will be ever grateful to PRINT DESIGN STUDIO for all the cool things I can do here), and used it as a stencil to paint it on. So if anyone ever needs any of these little cut-outs let me know, they aren’t expensive.
And finally its done! A cute box full of personalised tea bags. The perfect gift for a tea lover.
Did you know: All the teas I used actually come from the same plant. They are just processed differently, like roasted, steamed or fried, to get their different properties and tastes. Cool hey? (Interesting fact courtesy of Mr Byron Dance, my other half ;))
Xx
Craft & Create 