Design Inspired: Vintage Tea Tins

If you saw my “Coffee Shop in a Box” post, you know that I am not a fan of coffee…but I do love a cup of tea. Usually with a side of cake. Well…let’s be honest…I love cake with or without the tea. But who doesn’t.

I also love vintage tea tins, but they can be hard to come by unless you are a frequent thrift shopper…and even then, they can sometimes be a bit pricey, especially if they are in good condition. If you’re a stamper, it’s very easy to use your supplies to replicate the look of vintage tea tins and create a beautiful project that is perfect for gift giving.

To create vintage tea tins, you’ll wanna start out with…uh…tea tins. Obvi. I picked my up from Specialty Bottle (one of my favorite places for gift packaging) and they have a great selection of tea tins that are perfect for this project.

For this project, I used the 3.8″ square tea tin and spray painted it gold to make a more authentic looking tin. The spray paint went onto the tin very easily and dried to a smooth finish.

With your tin dry – you’re ready to add a label, which you’ll want to stamp using any variety of stamps that you wish. I chose floral stamps since those are commonly seen on authentic vintage tea tins.

{1} For this label, I started by stamping a subtle background using Papertrey Ink’s Tin Types Background Stamp Set.

{2} Next, I added small floral images on top of the background using images from Papertrey Ink’s Simple Jane Stamp Set.

{3} I found that a border on the top and bottom of the label adds a finished look. For this border, I created a border using Chantilly Trim by WPlus9.

{4} Last, you’ll want to add a layered label for the front of the tin. For this design, I stamped that back with Simply Stationery by Papertrey Ink and then added the tea label using Papertrey Ink’s Tea for Two stamp set.

There are plenty of uses for a tin like this, but if you’re creating this for gift giving, you may wanna go ahead and fill it with a few tea bags. You can add a personal touch to the tea bags by removing the tag and adding a handmade tag of your own. I did this by creating a set of tea tags using Clear & Simple Stamps Tea Tags which are part of the newly released Collection 7.