Tea Cup box

I was watching a video on how to make paper tea cups so I decided to make one myself out of some of my handmade paper. Please go HERE to see the steps in making your own paper.

The site, Red Ted Art has a template and instructions to follow to make your own tea cup. I traced the pattern onto my paper, it took 2 sheets made from the medium pour handmold for my box size.

 I tweaked it a little bit by adding some stamping and water coloring to the paper before assembling it. Hand made paper is extremely absorbent so you need to keep that in mind when coloring in your image. I wet the entire pieces after I cut them out and then dabbed my watercolors in the stamped areas and let the colors bleed out. Set it on a paper towel in the sun to dry.

Next, I took a small box and covered it to look like a book. I added some white handmade paper to the edges, yellow handmade paper to the spine and to the cover. It took 1 sheet of white and 2 sheets of yellow to cover my box. I purposely let the deckled edge hang slightly off the box because I really like how it looks, but you can trim that off with your scissors if you want a crisper line.

I glued a doily on the top of the box and then attached my tea cup on top of it. I took an actual tea bag and adhered it into the tea cup ( love how it smells, a bonus! ) and draped the tag over and glued it down also.

 I have a favorite quote by C.S. Lewis which I hand wrote on a scrap piece of handmade paper. I punched a small hole in the top along with a small slit and slid it over the string and glued it down over the original tea tag.

The last part was adding the title of the book....I should have done this before adhering it to the box, but I still like how it came out. I think the wonky handwriting looks kinda sweet, which is how I like my tea and my stories anyway!

This could make a fabulous box to give your Mom her Mother's Day gift in and she could use it to keep all her Mother's Day cards in it that you know she collects! ♥