Sunday, September 30, 2012

Tea ball holder

I saw a friend having a holder for his tea ball, and I wanted to buy one. But then I thought, why don't I just make it myself?

After some time of looking out for parts, I ended up with:
1. The metal part of a textile wall decoration (similar to the picture below). My girlfriend found one in a small second hand shop in KittelfjÀll, Sweden, and only wanted to use the textile. These type of decorations are very common to find in such places in Sweden.

2. A miniature plate, found in my late grandmothers apartment (probably from a doll house, of which she had a few)
3. Some electrical tape
4. Small pieces of an old bicycle tube

What I did was simply bend the metal part, using my hands, a table and the floor. You don't need strength, the difficult part is to get it completely symmetric. To keep the metal tips together, I used the electrical tape, and made a cut out in it to keep the tea ball in place. I glued the plate, which fit surprisingly well (it was round, not heart shaped as in the above picture). Finally, I cut out squares of about 3x3 mm out of the bicycle tube as feet, to make it more stable.

And this is the result!