Card making tutorial: Tea bag folding with Japanese paper

You will need:

• Cutting mat
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Scalpel/scissors
• Glue stick
• 15cm X 15cm blank card
• 15cm X 15cm piece of patterned paper
• 5cm X 15cm piece of complimenting patterned paper
• 6cm X 15cm piece and 9cm X 9cm piece of coordinating coloured card

1. Take the 15cm X 15cm patterned piece of paper.  Here I am using Japanese paper, which works really well for this, but you can use any patterned paper.
2.  Using a pencil and a ruler draw a grid 5cm X 5cm squares on the back.
3.  Carefully cut along the grid lines using a scalpel or pair of scissors.  You will have 9 squares.





© 2015 Jennifer Richardson

I am using one of the most basic tea bag folding techniques following the instructions provided by Card Inspirations here.  But if you type tea bag folding into Google or Pinterest you will find many more examples.  For this tutorial you will only need 8 of the 9 squares, but don’t throw away the final square as I will have another tutorial to show you what you can do with any paper scraps!


4.  For each 5cm X 5cm square: With wrong-side facing up, fold the paper in half, open out and fold in half the other way.  Turn the paper over so the right-side is facing up and fold in half diagonally once and open out.  Turn the paper over again so wrong-side is facing up and push the diagonal folds in and up to create a folded 2.5cm X 2.5cm square.
5.  Once you have folded all 8 squares, using a glue stick start to slot one square inside another to create an eight-pointed star as shown below.
6.  Using the glue stick, stick your eight-pointed star to the 9cm X 9cm piece of coloured card (I’ve used a golden yellow) and carefully cut around the points of the star using a scalpel or scissors to create a border approximately 0.5cm wide.





© 2015 Jennifer Richardson

7.  Next cut a 5cm X 15cm piece of coordinating patterned paper and a 6cm X 15cm piece of the same coloured card you used to back the eight-point star.
8.  Stick the piece of patterned paper to the coloured card using a glue stick so that you have a 0.5cm border down the long sides.
9.  Apply glue to the back of the coloured card and position it on your blank card where you want it to be (I positioned mine approximately 2cm in from the folded edge.)





© 2015 Jennifer Richardson



10. 1.      Finally, stick the eight-pointed star to the front of the blank card positioning it half way between the top and the bottom and so the top and bottom points are lined up with the edge of the coloured card.
    I finished my card off in keeping with a Japanese theme using some Japanese Mizuhiki paper cord to tie a clamshell knot (or Daki Musubi in Japanese) which I glued to the centre of my star.  This image posted on Paper Wishes illustrates how to do this.

© 2015 Jennifer Richardson