Tea Bag Folding

Tea Bag folding can be a fun technique to use and I love the little papers you can get specifically for it.  But you CAN use papers you have on hand if they are a small repeating design!  Just cut your own 1 1/2" to 2" squares (you usually need 8 of each design). I did that for the two examples here.

To get a true tea bag look, you need to make sure the design is the same on all your squares.  This takes a bit of work, but really isn't too bad if the design is a small one.  For example, with the argyle/diamond pattern, I decided to start by cutting length-wise through the center of the red diamonds. This gave me several strips of paper that were all the same.  Then I measured the width of the strip. This gave me the length I would need to cut from the strip to get a square.  Then I figured out exactly where on the pattern I wanted to cut this length, so I could repeat it to get the rest of my squares all the same. In this case it turned out that I needed to cut the tips off a row of diamonds, count three rows of diamonds, including that one, and cut the tips off the third row of diamonds.  Try it! It's not as complicated as it sounds.  For each of the example cards, I started with paper that was only 4 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches. I cut my squares, and even had some left over for a border treatment!