A tea a day keeps... You happy during Christmas time

I'm a tea drinker - hence the name of this blog - and so are my bestie and my mum. So I decided that they need an advents calendar with teabags. My bestie got a red-green-gold one hanging on a long band while my mum who loves blue obviousely got a blue one with silver one in a box.

I know it is a bit too late now for this year but I post the tutorial nevertheless. If I remember I'll post it again next year in early November. And maybe somebody still needs a last minute idea. 

The bags are quite easy to make though cutting, folding and glueing takes some time. You'll need: gift wrapping paper (70*80 cm), 2 sheets of coloured crafting paper, star shaped stickers, gold or silver pen. For the box version: one small metal or cardboard box or a matching bowl or flower pot or whatever. For the hanging version: ribbon, cellotape
Tools: Scissors, ruler, pen, glue, set square

Cut the wrapping paper in 10*23 cm big pieces. Fold in the middle of the long side. Fold and glue 1 cm on each short side to the back and let the glue dry well. Fold 3.5 cm from the open side down so that the bag is 8*8 cm. Mark the middle of the open side and cut from there down to the folded line on each side. If you use paper that is white on one side make sure that there is no white visible when this triangle is folded down.
When you go for the hanging version cut gift ribbon in pieces, fold them in the middle and glue to the back of the bags with cellotape.
Fill the bags with tea and close them with a star shaped sticker. Cut the tags out of the coloured paper. I used cookie cutter for the motives, though you could also do it freehand or make a cardbord pattern. Write the numbers on the tags with a gold or silver pen.
For the hanging version: Cut holes into the tags, fix them to the gift band and hang all the bags on a long fabric band.
For the box version: Stick the tags to the bags with another sticker and fill them into your box.

 Step by step

 Sorry for the bad quality. Winter, artificial light, darkness and so on...

I don't think many people have 24 different teas at home... So three ways of getting so many tea bags.
1. Look out for sampler boxes. For example Twinings has boxes with 5 different "plain" or flavoured black tea (5 bags for every flavour, so you have something to try too) Health food stores also often have boxes with different herbal teas and if you don't have any tea at all, look out for tea advents calendars.
2. Ask friends to give you a teabag each of three or four different teas. If you ask a group of friends you'll soon have a lot different tea
3. Make teabags out of your loose tea. You can find a tutorial here