DIY Tea Tin

I had this tiny DIY-thingie going on one night. I'd bought Matcha Tea for cooking/baking purposes (try it with risotto!) from a Tea House in Hamburg and would have liked to have a prettier tin to go along with it. I insist on storing my loose teas properly and most of all elegantly! Therefore I was left no choice but to take action myself. I took inspiration from my bigger jars -as seen in the picture above- and thus went for a japanese style.

First of all you need some of these lovely origami papers. I bought my yuzen at my old job at Akiko's. My tin was luckily tiny enough that I could work with 8 cm x 8 cm big slips and needed altogether only 4 pieces for it. For bigger projects, bigger papers of course. You may as well take other papers but make sure they're thick enough so that they won't get wavy from the glue and last longer in use.

Start with picking up a nice series like Bewitched here that doesn't need to much of your attention to run in the back. Tea Tin dressing needs love and devotion you see. You also need some runny glue, scissors and a flat soft paintbrush. I had Decopatch glue (google decoupage technique), and just a basic 1 cm wide watercolour brush.

Now use the cap to draw a circle to the back side of  your chosen paper and cut it out by leaving a 3-4mm edge to it. Spread the glue with a brush and place the paper onto the middle of the cap. Now use scissors to for tiny diagonal cuts for the left-over edges and then fold and glue them along the border rim as seen above.

For the "body" you should measure the hight and width of your tin and cut a 2mm higher rectangular piece to wrap around it. Glue. Finish the edges like you did with the cap.

Now do the same thing to your cap that was still left undressed above except for the top. It's just another cylinder so don't sweat it. Pay extra care, however, when glueing and finishing the edges! You don't want them to start peeling off any time soon.

TA-DAAH! A pretty little tin for storing tea, jewelry or any other small items elegantly. I also think it's a great made-by-yourself gift idea! Infact I am already planning on trying the same method on a squared tin for a friend's birthday that is coming up next week!

Ps. I've used decoupage technique before on several items as you might see in picture Two with the spacey looking box holding my sewing things or in picture 4 the picture frames on the wall dressed in the map of Barcelona.