Loose Leaf Tea Canisters

Create your own good looking and inexpensive loose leaf tea canisters.

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Step 1: Making the canisters.

I have been brewing a lot of loose leaf teas lately. I wanted to purchase some nice canisters to hold the teas in. Everything I found in the stores was either really expensive or ugly.

I saw a bunch of tin canisters with Christmas prints in the sale bin at the craft store for less than a dollar each. So, I purchased the canisters, some pretty paper by Paper Sourceand Mod Podge.

I cut out paper to fit the canisters, and used a paintbrush to apply Mod Podge to the tin and glue the paper in place. The lids were a little tricky. I cut out a circle and thin strip for the sides of the lid. Once the glue dried, I painted on a few layers of glue over the paper to seal it. Now I have a nice set of canisters that match my kitchen colors.

nancyCpants says: Jun 5, 2012. 1:59 AM

These are the cutest things I've seen all day but I'm worried about food safety. Containers not meant to store food can contain all kinds of fun things like lead, which you don't want to leach into something you're going to eat. The regulations just are not as tight for general storage as they are for food storage.

I'm sure someone can chime in with ideas for food safe liners, but it might be worth keeping the goods in a separate, food safe container and stashing them in these adorable canisters.

StoryAddict says: Jan 27, 2011. 7:01 PM

I'd also suggest trying thrift stores. People throw out/donate all kinds of things. I scored an awesome Oriental-style tea tin today and only paid a quarter for it! It has a couple of dings, but I don't mind. It'll be awesome once it's been washed up a bit :)

UltraMagnus says: Aug 28, 2008. 1:54 PM

please make sure the tins are actually tin, or at least plated in it... there is a good reason that tea caddies used to have tin liners, and that is that the acid (or base, not sure) will corrode a lot of metals.