24oz Paper Teacup

Recently, I was asked if it was possible to create a large, 24oz teacup using my Teacup and Saucer favour box template. Not a problem, I replied, and to prove it, here's one that I made!

Ok, so I admit it doesn't look very interesting here, having been made entirely out of plain white cardstock, but it provided me with an enticing blank canvas to build upon ... 

And just look at it now!

With the teacup being so big, the first thing I needed to do was to strengthen the structure. So far, I had only used 210gsm card, and so the obvious solution was to create some panels for the outside.

I made a rough template, then looked for some thicker, heavier card that I could use. The inside of this used greeting card was perfect!

I drew around the template six times, keeping the pink stripe at the base, then cut them out.

The card was really thick, so I curved it slightly towards the base with a pencil. This would allow it to sit neatly over the hard edges of the teacup and give a nice rounded appearance.

I applied some PVA glue to the top and bottom edges only, about 10mm deep, and attached the first panel to the teacup.

I continued to work my way around until all six panels were in place. I had to trim a little off the side edges where the handle sticks out to make it fit, but otherwise it all went together quite neatly.

The handle needed strengthening too, so I cut out two more handle shapes from the greeting card and attached them (to the front and back) with PVA glue.

I now needed to do something to the inside of the teacup, to mask all of the tabs and hard edges. So, using the same template as before, I cut six more panels out of the remaining greeting card piece.

After trimming them down slightly to make them fit, I glued them all into place.

I had a few small pieces of the greeting card left over, and so I decided to use a hole punch to create some more little circles to add to the design.

I then created a little sentiment to go on the front of the cup. I used a script font called 'Angel Heart' and cut it out of an old greeting card insert using my Cricut Explore Air 2.

It was extremely fiddly to glue into place, but the result looks amazing!

As a finishing touch, I wrapped a thin strip of glittery, gold washi tape around the rim of the teacup and overlapped it inside.

This ended up being a lovely upcycling project, using some old greeting cards that I had been given recently.

If you would like to have a go at making one yourself, you will need to begin by resizing my Teacup and Saucer template (SVG or PDF) to approximately 179% 

Now, just a thought... should I attempt a large-scale teapot next?