Organizing Box for Tea

Make a beautiful organizer for your teabags. Wonderful as a gift or to spruce up any teaparty.

You can also use this tutorial to make a jewelry organizer or a divider for drawers.

You will need:

• A cardboard box (or make one yourself)
• Cardboard (I used one that books were shipped in)
• Duct tape
• Good glue (I love Aleen's glues and used the original one)
• Pretty paper (I used silvery sparkled)
• Decorations/embellishments
• Big beads to use as feet
• Diecut machine, like a silhouette (optional) or/and border punch
• Basic materials like scissors, ruler, scoring tool (or something flat) and pencil

A: Buy a nice big box of cookies.

B: Eat said cookies so you have an empty box :)

(This is what my teacollection looked like before. A number of teas were also scattered across the kitchentable and cupboards.)

Decide on what kind of layout you would like.

I had teas that didn't come individually packaged so for that I made a narrow section that will fit the container (far right).

My box is 27x18x6cm.

I made strips that were 6cm wide (to match the hight of the box). Then I scored them at 8.5, 7, 8.5 and 7 cm (the picture shows 9, but I had to downsize it to 8.5cm).

Check that it will fit and make 6 strips in total.

Use ducttape on the corners of the cardboard strips.

Glue together the sections. You could ducttape them together, but I found I had more control over how the sections dried using glue. You want them to be as aligned as possible. I used hairclips to hold them together while they dried.

Tip: If the sections have slight differences in height - align them correctly on the top. If they are slightly uneaven at the bottom it won't matter because it won't show anyway.

Paint the insert. I used two coats to cover the brown cardboard color. You only need to paint the inside and one of the outsides. The rest won't show anyway.

Cut 5cm wide strips of patterned paper and use a border punch on the long edges on both sides. Score lengthwise in the middle so it's easier to fold. Cut them to size.

Put the folded stip of patterned paper over a section of the cardboard. The cardboard edge is wider than the fold of the paper so you will need to take a scoring tool (or similar) to flatten out the fold (see image). This will give a nicer finish and will adhere better.

After you're done with all the pieces, glue them on.

Use a narrow strip of paper and adhere it to the two raw edges of the cardboard.

Glue on some bling on a string.

The insert is done!

Add the same kind of border you used for the insert to hide the raw edge of the box. You could do it on all sides, but I just did it on the front and then inked the other three edges with black ink.

Add a metal frame, different flowers, embellishments, diecut leaves, bling on a string - just anything you can find in your stash.

Tip: To give the flowers more dimension - glue on 1-3 cardstock pieces to the back. This will give them different heights and make it easier to put them next to eachother.

Glue four big beads to the corners of the box.

Write "tea" on a piece of paper to add to the frame or cut out letters with your cutout machine. I used an alphabet from quickutz called "storybook".

Add more sparkle where needed using glitterglue or like I did - a sakura gelly roll pen.

The more sparkle and bling the better, am I right?

Put in the insert and teas and admire your new teaparty focal point.

You could also use this for jewelry. Just add some foam (in the pic I used a kitchensponge and foam rollers) If you plan to use it for jewelry you might want to use a shallower box. Always have your items in mind when measuring the sections in the beginning.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you did, let me know by leaving a comment below.

Please vote for me in the "papercraft" and "cardboard" contest.

<3

/Katarina