There is nothing better than a hot cup of tea on a cold winter day, but there is always room for improvement. With this project each cup of tea gives you a glimpse of the past and allows you to showcase the multitude of photos you take each year, that never get printed out and live forever in your phone.

Handmade tea bags make for a great gift for a tea lover. Adding tiny Polaroid-like tags filled with pictures makes it an even more unique experience.

It's too late for this year's Valentine's day, but there is always next year, so keep it in mind if you want to make a quick and memorable gift.

If you don't feel like spending a few hours sewing heart shaped tea bags, you can buy regular teabags and replace the tags with handmade Polaroid ones.

Steps 1-3 describe how to make DIY heart shaped tea bags.

Steps 4-5 describe how to make Polaroid tags.

Supplies

For this project you will need:

tea bags with string (regular store-bought ones or DIY)
miniature pictures printed on thick, white cardstock
scissors, super glue, craft knife, glue stick
optional- cricut machine for more refined tea tags

If you want to make your own heart shaped tea bags you will need:

fabric tea bags
loose tea
white thread and needle + thin string (or embroidery thread)

Step 1: Tea Blend, Tea Bag Size and Shape

To make your own tea bags you have to first decide on the tea blend and measure carefully how much loose leaves you will need to make one cup of beverage. I opted for dried hibiscus (small particles, not dried whole), each cup of tea needs 1/2 TBS of loose leaves.

Decide which shape you want your teabag to be. Print out or draw your chosen shape in several different sizes. Arrange your tea leaves within the shapes in a single layer and figure out which size works best. You don't want your tea leaves to be too tightly packed, they will swell and expand, so you need a little bit of empty space.

Once the size has been decided, cut it out of paper and use that as a stencil to trace the shape onto your fabric tea bags.

Step 2: Stitches and Filling

*I used green thread for clearer pictures.

Use white thread to run a simple running stitch (or any other stitch you want) along the border of the tea bag. Try to leave 2-3 mm space between the stitches and the drawn-on border.

Leave one side unstitched, you will need about 2-3cm of open space.

Fill the bag with tea with a spoon or a small funnel. Carefully hold the edges close and sew the hole closed with more stitches.

Make sure to use tight stitching, there can be no holes left between the stitches, otherwise the tea will start to fall out.

Trim the excess fabric with small, sharp scissors and remember to cut away the drawn-on border, it will look neater that way.

Step 3: Strings

Use a needle with a big eye to attach a length of white or coloured embroidery thread (approximately 12cm long for each bag) to each bag.

Tie it off in a tight knot.

Decide how you want to present the tea bags and where you want the strings to go. I looped mine up and over the front of the bag and I wanted my tea tags to be positioned in the middle of the tea bag, so that's where I trimmed the strings.

Step 4: Polaroid Tags Sizes

Play around with some scissors and scrap paper and figure out how big you want the tags to be. Mine are 28mmx32mm and they are the perfect size for dunking and showcasing the pictures.

Step 5: Polaroid Tags - Simple Version

Find your digital pictures and crop them to size. Print a few versions in draft mode to see if they are appropriately sized.

Print the final versions of the photos on a sheet of white cardstock.

Use scissors to cut the pictures out with a 2-4mm white border.

Either glue the strings to the back of the Polaroid with superglue, or make a small hole at the top of the Polaroid, thread the string through and tie it off.

Step 6: Polaroid Tags - Cricut Version

For whatever reason, my printer couldn't manage to print pictures on a heavy cardstock. I had to print them out on regular paper and then find a way to make the frames.

I'm not very dexterous when it comes to scissors, so I had to resort to using Cricut.

I cut out frames and backing from heavy, white cardstock and used regular glue stick to sandwich the pictures and strings between the frames.