Valentine Tea

My friend, Kristin, is moving to Texas. Kristin is someone whom you meet and then instantly wish she had been your best friend for the past ten years. She also taught me how to sew. And more importantly she taught me not to afraid of my sewing machine.

So as a little going away token I wanted to make her a little something crafty using the fabric that I used for that very first project that we worked on in her living room. My first two attempts were disasters. I almost gave up and just bought something at Target, but then...then I found Creature Comforts and inspiration struck. She has a great Valentine tea bag tutorial. I wasn't able to use the tea bags as designed because I wanted to put them in a little tin I had and my tin was too small for the wrapped bags.

But let me back up and tell you about the tin. This is a really really cute idea for packaging a small gift (earrings, pin, tea bags). You take a small pop top (very important) tin of something like peaches. You use a can opener and open it FROM THE BOTTOM. You have to make sure to use a can opener that doesn't crinkle the edges. Then you remove the contents from the bottom, leaving the pop top intact. Then wash and dry the tin thoroughly. Put your contents in upside down, so that they will be right side up when the recipient opens it from the pop top. Hot glue the bottom back into place and decorate the tin as desired. People love this and can't figure out how you did it.

In my case I used a piece of the fabric mentioned above and wrapped it around the tin, securing it with scrapbook tape. Then I cut one of the labels from Creature Comforts' post and stuck that on. The tea bags inside (3 of them, I think. It is a very small tin) all have the little heart tag that Creature Comforts designed. I also used some basket shred in there so it would look more festive when she opened it, but you could also use something like tissue paper. Then I tied some ribbon on the pop top and was done. From idea to done in less than an hour.