Home Made Tea Bags

Hope everyone had a fantastic Valentine's Day. Here is our last post of hearts for love... I know it's a bit late for this year around but it's never to early to find inspiration for next year!

I want to share these adorable tea bags I've made with my Sister. She primarily made them for her boyfriend, they turned out so cute we just had to make more. We made them for her Sunday school kids to give to their parents, and I made a couple for my sons teachers.

The idea came from this blogger who explains great instructions.
http://asubtlerevelry.com/handmade-valentine-youre-tea-riffic

We tried it out that way but also made our own adjustments.

First of all we cut out several different shapes of hearts, also some straight ended and some scalloped (the scalloped ones were a bit of a pain to cut). Coffee filters is actually what is used to make these tea bags and they can start to rip if they are over worked, this mainly happened at the final sewing step.

One change we started making is, we started off by sewing the two hearts together at the centre "v" part of the heart. We stopped just diagonal from that point and left a length of string to sew the rest once filled. Once it is completely sewn, we left a long enough tail to make the pull string that now comes from the centre of the heart which I think is very cute. This way also eliminates having to punch a whole in the heart, which is one less thing you have to do. And of course a printed tag finishes off the tea bag perfectly.

The other thing I want to tell you is the sewing method in the original post is certainly nice and practical... But it takes forever! We found that a straight stitch worked up a lot faster and actually created quite a nice look and certainly still holds the contents in place.

For our tea we used dehydrated strawberries and kiwi. And added some rock sugar for sweetening which is some German brand that I cannot translate. We let the kids fill them up and finished sewing from the point we left off.

I placed the ones for my sons teachers, in small ziplock bags with labels describing the flavour.

And that's our home made tea experience! I think they are very clever and unbelievably cute! And who doesn't love a cup of tea! This obviously made a great valentines gift, but the possibilities are really endless since you could do any shape. And any flavour for that matter, just dehydrate whatever fruit you want and there you go. You could also use leaf tea bought at specialty tea stores, or I thought of dried apples and cinnamon sticks. I could have a hay day and I'm sure you could too. Enjoy!

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Lollipop Heart Flowers

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

My next post are these adorable lollipop flowers. At first glance they are a pretty flower... But the petals are made of hearts! And that's what makes this craft so special.

It's quite easy too! We used plain coloured card stock to cut the pieces. For each flower you need three hearts, one leaf and a starburst centre. I used a stencil for the heart but just sketched the other shapes until I got what I liked.

Once cut we let the kids colour the shapes if they wanted. Punched a hole in the pointed end of each heart, one end of the leaf and the centre of the starburst.

To assemble the flower, you can use any lollipop pop you want. We used tootsie pops. First the starburst gets feed through the end of the lollipop, then the three hearts and finally the leaf. Space them out evenly and place a small piece of tape over the leaf to hold everything in place.

We did this with my sisters Sunday school class. The kids thought they were great and each got to choose one person to give their flowers to. The leaf acts as the tag so we wrote the to's and from's there. We tied this craft into a "Loving your Neighbour" story.

Depending on what lollipops you use, we also covered some up with tissue paper and fastened with ribbon.

But that about wraps up these sweet Valentine's day gifts. Our Sunday School kids loved them and I'm sure your kids will too!

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A Hug that Lasts Forever

There's still time to get inspired for Valentine's Day! so here is My second post of Hearts for Love.

This time I made these super cute hugs with both my kids to give their Dad.

I used plain coloured card stock. Traced each of my kids hands and cut them out. The kids coloured their hand prints and decorated them with stickers. While they got creative, I cut out some hearts. A large and medium heart for the middle which I decorated saying "an Oliver hug" and "a hug from Opal". The back of the two hearts was were we wrote "I love you as far as my arms can stretch and more".

I measured with ribbon the span from my kids left wrist, across their chest and all he way to their right wrist. I attached one end of the ribbon to one handprint and finished it off with a small heart. Fed the ribbon through the two wholes punched in the large heart and attached the other end to the other hand print.

and thats how we made the hugs that will last forever, for my kids to give their Dad for Valentine's Day. I wrote on the back of each of the large hearts, the age that the kids are so Daddy will always remember what their hugs were like at 3 1/2 and 1 1/2.

Hope you Enjoyed! More to come of Hearts for Love.

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Button Valentine's

For my first post of Hearts for Love, just in time for Valentine's Day, I would like to share these cute heart button Valentine's my son and I made for his class mates.

I found these great button packs at Michael's. I thought it was a cute way to add something special instead of giving out candy.

I used some simple heart stencils and cut out various sizes in several different coloured and patterned papers. I paired a large and small heart together and let Oliver colour the back before writing the "to" and "from" info.

Finished off, by pinning the pin in the centre of the heart and they're ready for delivery on Valentine's Day!

Hope you enjoyed this quick little post. More Hearts for Love to come...

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