Getting Creative!

Hey all!
Here's the post I've been promising for a while. I've scoured Pinterest and rummaged around the internet for some craft and creative uses of tea and tea accessories. I've linked all the original sources, so you can find tutorials and other cute ideas after the jump. The photos I'm using are also from the original sources.

Enjoy!

#1: Tea Wreath
This one is precious. It's a great way to display the teas that you have available to guests, so that they don't have to dig through your tea stash - I know mine can be ridiculously disorganized, so this is an adorable way to keep things simple! You can find the tutorial from Kujo Designs here.

I'm going to make one of these over the summer to hang in my apartment next school year! It'll make things so much easier when I have friends over for tea. I've yet to find a cute way of organizing my loose leaf teas though. Speaking of loose tea...

#2: Loose Tea and Honey Wedding Favors

This idea is out of Real Simple magazine, from the article, "10 Creative Wedding Favor Ideas." As someone who's hoping to hear wedding bells sometime in the next few years (and is therefore perusing the internet for ideas), I don't know if I'd use these as the actual wedding favors - not everyone has the know-how or accessories to properly brew loose tea.  Maybe after a bridal shower or some other small, wedding-related purpose - because it really is a sweet idea!  The honey stirring stick is a pretty and delicious touch, and you can hand out any tea you like!

#3: Teacup Art/Décor

This one looks like a professional piece of art, but I see no reason why it can't be replicated fairly simply! 

You'd have to find a place to hang them where you won't bump them, maybe up high in the kitchen or in the corner of a breakfast room. And perhaps not quite so many as in this picture. But it would be a fun, cheap, and easy way to bring some character to a room! Like I mentioned in my teacup candle post, you can find old teacups without their saucers for really cheap - even a dollar! - at antique stores, and probably even cheaper at thrift stores and garage sales. The key here would be to find delicate, colorful teacups, with a color scheme if you'd like. Then you can secure them with some twine and hang them up at different levels. Et voilà! C'est l'art!

#4: Teacup as a Vase

Here's an incredibly simple but extremely pretty idea! It comes from Style Me Pretty.

Just find a teacup and saucer of a suitable size, and you've got yourself a little vase! Be sure to cut the stems so that the flowers are resting snugly in the teacup. This one really is darling, and it's the easiest one on the list.

#5: Tea Bags for Happy Eyes

Did you know that caffeine helps tighten skin? That's why new anti-aging moisturizers have been adding caffeine as an ingredient in recent years. It also helps sooth eyes that are puffy and red or have dark circles by constricting blood vessels and therefore reducing inflammation and discoloration. I'd heard about this one before, but I wanted to give you all a link with directions, so I found an article from TLC called "5 Reuses for Tea Bags," which includes some other great recycling ideas for tea bags! According to this article, green tea works the best because it has an additional anti-inflammatory in it. I'm definitely going to try this once finals week is over! My mom calls the dark under-eye circles that run in my family an "Irish curse," but we'll see what tea can do to combat it! Maybe I'll post some before and after pictures if I'm feeling photogenic. Until then, here's a model: 

I hope you all enjoyed the ideas! They're not all exactly crafts, but I think they're all definitely worth trying. Check in tomorrow for another post, this time on which tea to drink for any situation under the sun - my own attempt at a sort of tea index. Nighty night, tea lovers!