Tea Bag Folding with Stamped Images

Tea bag folding, also known as kaleidoscope origami, is an exciting paper-folding technique that originated in Holland. When tea bag folding began, designs were folded using colorful tea bag envelopes found in European teas. Due to its increased popularity, tea bag folding is now done with small squares of patterned paper you can buy or print on your home computer. These paper squares or “tiles” as they are commonly called are folded and interlocked to form a geometric design. The geometric design or “medallion” is then mounted on a greeting card, mini album, bookmark, or similar item.

We enjoyed learning tea bag folding so much that we wanted to explore how we could use it with our rubber stamps. So, we decided to make our own tea bag tiles from stamped images. It turned out to be easier than we thought! Take a look...

Stamping Tiles for Tea Bag Folding

Step 1: Draw a 1¾" square on your paper.		Step 2: Stamp your image on top of the square. As you can see, your stamped image can be larger than the square. We just used a portion of this larger image.		Step 3: Cut out the tile. Repeat steps 1 & 2 to make a total of 8 stamped tiles. We colored our tiles with colored pencils and blending chalks before folding.

Variations: For this design we used square tiles, but medallions can also be made with round or rectangular tiles as well. You can also trim the corners of your tile with a corner rounding punch or decorative scissors for an interesting look.

The fold we used in our design is called a basic triangle fold. It is a common fold in both tea bag folding and origami. It is easy to learn and can be used as the basis for more intricate folds.

Step 1: Fold the tile in half diagonally. Unfold.		Step 2: Fold the tile in half diagonally the other way. Unfold.		Step 3: With the stamped side in, fold the tile in half horizontally. Unfold.
Step 4: Holding the tile in the same position with the stamped side out, push the inverted folds in, then fl atten into a triangle.		Step 5: Repeat steps 1-4 to create a total of 8 folded triangles from your tiles.		Step 6: Begin assembling the medallion with one folded triangle. Bend one of its fl aps upward, then tuck a second folded triangle inside the fl aps.
Step 7: Fold the flap over the second triangle and glue the pieces together.		Step 8: Repeat steps 6 & 7, adding and gluing one triangle at a time until the medallion is complete.		Variations: This one fold can create many different medallions. A — Here we alternated two different paper colors to make our medallion. B — For this medallion we adjusted the way the triangles interlocked to produce a diamond on the top.