Teabag Envelope Flowers (Crafts 01)

1. Start with a teabag envelope with the teabag removed.

2. Gently pull apart the envelope along the side seam.

3. Pull all the way down to the fold on both sides.

4. Smooth the envelope.

5. The seams are fragile. You may want to cut them off (as here) before you start making the curls.

6. Make the curls by cutting the envelope into strips, leaving a margin about 5/8" intact at one end. Choose the end that is less interesting for the margin. The strips should be parallel to the long edge and about 1/4" in width.

7. Continue across the width of the envelope. (Sorry that it looks like the envelope has been cut in half at the fold here. It hasn't but the lower half hid from the camera!)

8. CLOSE THE SCISSORS! Then use the side of the closed scissors to curl each strip in turn. Place the scissors behind one of the strips nearest the uncut part of the envelope. Use your thumb to press the strip against the side of the scissors, and gently pull the scissors to the other end of the strip. Be careful not to pull too hard especially near the fold or the strip will break. The scissors will scrape the underside of the paper, causing the paper to curl away from you. The underside of the envelope - the lining, if any - will show inside the curls.

9. Another view of the position of the thumb for curling.

10. Continue curling all the strips.

11. Here is the envelope with all the curls completed.

12. Pleat the uncut margin to narrow the base of the flower.

13. Three pleats makes a good base.

14. Attach the flower to a stem. I use a florist's plastic spike and a binder clip. Tape or glue the pleat if you don't have a binderr clip. Bamboo skewers, straws or pencils make good stems, too.

15. Here is a three-bag flower: Earl Grey, Constant Comment and in back a foil-lined organic ginger whose strips wouldn't curl as tightly.

16. And another view of a bouquet.

You can also see a slide show of all the photos here.

Tips (npi)

Use blunt-tipped scissors when you make the flowers with little kids.
Any teabag envelope will do - all paper, waxed or plasticized paper, foil lined. Foil lined are pretty because the foil side shows when you make the curls.
You make paper curls the same way you make ribbon curls, by holding the paper against the edge of CLOSED scissors and pulling it so that the whole length is scraped.
Keep the scissors CLOSED so (1) you don't hurt yourself, and (2) you don't blunt the scissors.
Making teabag envelope flowers is fun for elementary school kids, girl scouts and summer campers, seniors, anybody.
Invite your tea-drinking friends to save their tea bag envelopes. Then make flowers for a fundraiser.
Decorate gifts with paper flowers, either from teabag envelopes or from scraps of wrapping paper so that the flowers match the package.

I've always made paper curls to decorate gift-wrapped packages. I came up with the idea one day long ago when I realized I had nice wrapping paper but no ribbons. I invented teabag envelope flowers in 2013 when I was temporarily living in a sparsely furnished apartment without art or decoration. I was also drinking a lot of tea. I made a bouquet of teabag envelope flowers and put them in a rinsed-out milk carton. Oh, the beauty of recycling!
rjm 5/7/15 rev 5/8

Welcome

This blog is an offshoot of Roberta's Revised, Reorganized and Annotated Recipes. Once again R3A2 stands for Roberta's Revised, Reorganized and Annotated. As to revisions, my posts are usually revised quite a few times on the day of posting and for the next few days, too. After that I may not revise again, but then again, I may see something that could be improved. My mother always said of New York and it's eternal construction sites, "It will be a great city if they ever finish it." My essays are, I hope, like New York.

Actually my mother thought NYC was already great, but that would ruin the joke, one that she liked to offer up to tourists and other strangers in her walks and bus-rides around town.

RJM 5/7/15