Saturday, January 9, 2010

Waste Not, Want Not

I hate throwing things away, because of the impact on the environment. That is why I am fascinated right now with the art of tea bag folding. Apparently, when the craft first got started in Europe in 1992, it was because an inginuitive woman named Tiny van der Plas decided to do origami with the leftover paper wrappers off of tea bags. She was creating greeting cards, and in addition to cards, her techniques can be used to create a number of symetrical objects, most commonly medallions.

Today, the instructions for the majority of projects recommend using special pieces of craft paper instead of tea bags, but there's nothing that says you can't mix in actual tea bag wrappers to create unique tea party invitiations or home decorations.

You can get some ideas from the following books, the first of which was written by Tiny herself: