Some Tea for my Sweeties (or Sweeteas)

One thing I'm a sucker for is a cute play on words.

I follow, like, 80 blogs (which may or may not sound like a lot to you... I thought it was a lot until my mom showed me her reader... she follows over 150!  Including mine... hi, Mom!  She also faithfully comments on my posts every single day... thanks, Mom!).  So anyway, I follow many blogs of very creative people and I keep seeing lots of cute Valentine's that use various plays on words, like "I'm sew into you" with a picture of a sewing machine, or "Wood You Be Mine?" over a faux bois texture - cute stuff!

Wanting to reduce my coffee intake, but not wanting to give up a warm morning beverage my mind was on tea... What popped into my head was the gift of a nice bag of tea with the message, "You are a sweetea."  Here are instructions on how to make these SweeTea Valentine's.

You will need:

• Pretty paper (Each "tea bag" requires a 3 1/2" x 8" strip of paper + enough scraps for a small heart tag)
• Scissors
• White glue (like Elmer's) and a glue stick, both
• "You are a sweetea" tags, download here
• Your favorite tea
• Thread
• Stapler and staples

Start by cutting strips of paper, 3 1/2" wide x 8" long.

Fold one of the strips 3 1/2" from the bottom, so you'll have a 1" flap at the top.

 

Apply a very thin line of glue up each side, leaving 1" at the top without glue.

Fold up the front flap and let it dry. It helps if you put it under something heavy while it dries so that the paper doesn't wrinkle.  When they are dry, using the glue stick, glue the "You are a sweetea" message to the back and let dry.

Prepare the little dunker tag.  You know, that tag on your tea bag that you use to pull it out of the cup?  No idea what it is officially called.  Cut small hearts for this, you'll need two per tea bag.  Mine were 1".  Cut 8" of thread and fold in half.  Put a small dot of glue in the middle of one of the hearts and put one end of the thread in it.  Top it with another heart, like a thread sandwich.  Let dry.

Fill your pretend tea bag with a real one.

Trim the corners off of the flap enclosure if you want to.  Fold closed and apply a small dab of glue to the center of the flap.  Stick other end of thread from heart tag to the glue and let dry.

 

Staple closed, taking care to staple over the thread.

Give it away to someone you think is a real sweetie/sweetea!




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