House of Jaipur Finds and other Crafty Supplies

The gorgeous wrapping paper from House of Jaipur

Last week I visited the House of Jaipur. It was my first visit to this Tea House and I was blown away! The food was delicious but the deco was definitely a winner in my books. I had their lunch with a special someone and I felt as if I were transported to another world. Adjoining the little eating nooks were rooms filled with even more beautiful finds.

Of course you could purchase any of the items seen while you dined. Vivid hanging cloths, oriental pillows and throws, ornate boxes and jewels, notebooks and gift bags! I love browsing places like that. My only regret was that I forgot my camera at home as the visit was spontaneous.

Anyway the point of this was that I found the most gorgeous "gift- wrapping" paper there. I'm using quotations because that is what they referred to these sheets of paper BUT I think they must have some other "better" purpose. They are too beautiful to be ripped apart when opening gifts!

Tea Strainer

I did see however notebooks, envelopes and gift bags covered in the same, if not similar paper. I thought that was a nice use. Very classy.

From my last post you saw that I made some wrappers for Tea bags. House of Jaipur was one of the recommended places from my tea-drinking friends to pick up some delicious gourmet tea. They sell them loosely however. So I either would have to make my own Tea bags from Coffee filters (because I can't think of anywhere that would sell the cloth tea bags individually in T&T, which could have led to custom heart shaped tea bags) or I could have scratched the entire tea/envelope operation and simply purchased a Tea Strainer or a Tea Ball.

Tea Ball

For some reason, I forgot about those things, even when I do have about 3 "Tea Balls" in my house.

At home we use them around Eid to put cloves and cinnamon in when making our Sawine, to add flavour and keep the cloves out of out bowls when we're ready to eat. Nothing is worse than biting a clove accidentally!

So now I have been educated. lol Those metal things are really for tea! and I can now buy loose tea leaves because I know how to use them. lol

In other news, I had a shopping trip to West Mall and I found my next craft project for Valentine's Day. This big glass jar! I found at a home-goods store while I was looking for coloured cupcake liners.

I'm not going to say what I'm using it for, just in case my Valentine reads this, but those mini-envelopes look like they may have found a home :D I can't wait to fill it up!

My shopping trip also yielded some new patterned paper and tissue paper. Turns out I bought some of the same patterned paper last year for Valentine's Day and only used a tiny portion of it AND I almost bought some kite paper in a fancy design that I had in an unopened pack already! I forgot they existed because they were stored at the bottom of a bag.

My sorted paper pile!

In light of this, I have decided that it is about time that I sort through all my materials and clean up and repack my Arts and Crafts cupboard. I probably haven't touched some of the things in there since I put them in in High School and it is rather dusty! I certainly have the time now and once I start my clinical years, it is rather doubtful that I would be using my supplies with the same frequency as I am now.

Cheers to new projects and a cleaner workspace!

Valentine's Day Crafts: Mini-envelopes/ Tea bags

I've been shopping around for creative ideas for Valentine's Day for a little while now. I'm going on a little family vacation and returning home on Valentine's Day itself, so I thought it would be nice to leave little presents for my Valentine to open while I'm away. One interesting find that inspired me was from Design.Wash.Rinse.Repeat.com with Valentine's Day Tea Tags (with printables). I thought I would design my own tea tags and individual tea bag wrappers.

The wrappers/ mini-envelopes were really simple to make and here is how you can too :)

Gather up your equipment and materials: Ruler, Scissors, Pencil, White Glue, a few Sheets of construction paper.

Step 1: The template!

I first made a template out of pink construction paper. I drew a rectangle the size of the tea bag that I wanted and added some flaps to it that were long enough to reach each other to glue together. Just glue along the edges and leave one flap "unglued".

As you can see above I made a tester to check the sizing. (I was still free styling the design)

After you finalise your template design, use your template and outline its shape unto some scrapbook paper (or any other paper of your choice). Cut out your pattern. Scour where your folds would be, by running a scissors along those lines. Fold your mini envelope and glue the flaps into place.

You should have a completed mini-envelope! The next step is to decorate.

Cutting out the squares

I designed some tags on my computer  saying "Be Mine" and cut them out. My original thought was to include some cute sayings, ("you suit me to the tea" or "orange you glad to be mine" for orange flavored tea) BUT THEN! I found some free vector graphics at Vector Graphics Blog. The 3 x 3 squares with little hearts on them were adorable and were just the right size for my envelopes. Also I thought the black and white theme seemed more masculine and perfect for a guy for valentine's.

After you cut them out, the next step is to simply stick them onto your envelope as seen below. I chose to take mine a step further.

Sequins, buttons and embroidery thread. Extra embellishing!

Because of the squares had a sort of stitched look to them, I decided to use red thread and some sequins to add a little dimension to my hearts. I also dug up some old white buttons and white embroidering thread.

Lots of careful hand stitching later, I came up with the following:

Ta-da!

Turns out that my Valentine is more of a coffee person than tea and I think the final products look too nice for a mere tea bag. I think I'll be using them with cute notes instead. I have just the container for them!

The great thing about this envelope-template design is that you can adapt it to make bigger envelopes. So custom greeting card envelopes, or gift envelopes for jewellery and other small gifts, or even at this size- gift tags!

I hope you all were extra inspired by these! I tried to keep it simple on the design to help out some friends of mine, but feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions or if you were extra inspired to make some of your own.

Happy crafting :)