Crafty Pink Anchor: Valentine Tea Gift Box Tutorial

Here's a cute Valentine's Day gift idea for all your favorite tea lovers out there.

Supplies:
-Baker's Twine - plain (8 feet) (I bought mine at Christmas Tree Shop for under 4 bucks!)
-SVG kits: Love Me Do by SVGCuts (for tea box and hearts)
-Cardstock/element stickers/alpha stickers: Yours Truly Kit by Echo Park
-Adhesives: Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive, Mini and Memory Glue Dots, and Pop Dots
-Ink: Colorbox by Clearsnap
-Marker: Copic Ciao - black
-Tea bags - 6 (any flavor)
-Scissors
-Ruler
-Paper Scorer/creaser
-Water
-Vinegar
-Food Coloring - Red
-Cup - For food coloring dying process
-Disposable Gloves
- Electronic Cutter and Program: I used my Ecraft and Scal3.

Dying your baker's twine

I recommend using gloves for this!
-Cut 8 feet (96 inches) of twine, place it in your designated dye cup. (I used one of the cups from an Easter Egg dying kit.)
- To get my baker's twine this bright hot pink color, I took red food coloring and followed the box instructions for dying eggs (yes, just used the amount of vinegar and hot water ratio the box recommends!). The brand I used instructs you to use 20 drops of red, but I used 30 drops and let my twine soak in the dye for 20 mins.
- Remove your twine from the dye (your twine will not be the color you see when you remove it) and run it under warm water to remove the excess dye until the water runs clear (should only be a few seconds). Then I ran it under cold water for a few seconds to cool the twine down. Put your newly dyed twine on some paper towels and let it dry. I let mine dry for almost 24 hours.

Tea Bag Tags
- You will need six pieces of your dyed twine cut to 12 inches. (You will have one piece of 24 inch twine leftover to use for the tea box.)
- Using you scissors, snip a little hole in the corner of each of your 6 tea bags (make sure the hole is on the sealed area.)

-Take a piece of your twine and put it through the hole in your tea bag. Make a knot by the end of tea bag and also a knot at the ends of the twine.

(Tip:: Make sure the hole is just large enough to fit your twine through, if the hole's too big it may rip through when you are tying the knots).

- In Scal3, resize the heart shape tag from the flat heart shaped box file (from the Love Me Do Kit by SVGCuts) to 1.5" wide and break apart the tag
so you can remove the circle. Delete the Circle - you don't need it for these tags. I copied and pasted the new (hole-less) heart 2 times so I had 3 hearts on my screen. Cut these out in whichever papers your heart desires.
-You will need 19 hearts total. 18 for the tags and 1 for the front of your tea box (put this one to the side for later). Take your 18 hearts and score them down the middle.

-For each tea bag you will need 3 hearts. Make sure you have the pattern you want on the outside of the heart facing down. The wrong side should be facing up. This is the side we will be putting glue on.
-Take one heart and attach a small glue dot or drop of glue in the top middle. Place the top knot of a tea bag on the glue dot.
-On your 2nd heart, place some glue on the right half only and adhere to the left side of your first heart (see pics below)

- Take your 3rd heart and place glue all over it. Adhere this to the 2nd hearts left side and the 1st hearts right side. You should now have a 3 dimensional heart at the end of your twine.

Tea Box

- Using the Candy Box File from the Love Me Do Kit by SVGCuts and your SCAL3, cut out the box and heart shape with your cutting machine.
- I cut mine with the dimensions that the kit recommends. Don't forget to add your clear acetate inside for the window!
- Assemble your box (if you don't know how to assemble this, check out SVGCuts youtube assembly video that goes along with their kit, it's super helpful).

- From the 24 inches of twine you have leftover from the tea bag tags tutorial, cut 9 inches of twine and wrap around bottom of box.
- I used a glue dot to adhere the ends to meet in the front right.

- Then take one 1.5" (wide) heart (you should have one put aside from the tea bag tag directions), ink the edges with black ink and adhere with a glue dot to cover the ends of the twine.

- Then take the hugs and kisses element sticker and adhere to the middle of the heart. I used a pop dot underneath the sticker for some dimension.

For the back of the box

- Take the pink ticket from the element stickers sheet and write the flavor of your tea bags using a black copic marker. Mine is - Lovely Lemon.

- Adhere the sticker to the bottom left of the box (you should be able to lift the twine a little to slip it underneath).

-In SCAL3, you will need to break apart the same heart shape that you used for the tea box heart outline and move the smaller heart off of the bigger one.

- Cut out the hearts in 2 different colors/patterns and ink the edges of them. I used black ink on the bigger heart and pink on the smaller heart.
- Starting with the smaller heart that will be on top, adhere the black small alphabet letters and red lower case letters to spell out Valentine Tea.
- Use pop dots to adhere the small heart onto the bigger heart. Then use some more pop dots to adhere the combined heart onto the back of your box.
- Using the rest of your twine, wrap it around the top of the box once and make a bow.

Once finished and assembled, the back of the gift box should look like the below picture:

Notes:

The dye on the twine is not 100% permanent. I did have some dye on my fingers after putting everything together. It did come off though when I washed my hands with soap and warm water.

- Kim