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The increase in health awareness and organic living has helped spark the resurgence of tea drinking across the globe. In the United States alone, tea sales almost tripled from less than two billion dollars in 1990 to over six billion dollars in 2005, according to the Tea Association of the United States.

At present, you will surely find a variety of tealeaves, such as oolong, rose, vanilla, jasmine, mint, and even fruit teas, including lychee, lemon and mango, in local supermarkets and coffee shops. Even tea bags have evolved from the common rectangular shape to the new circular or pyramid-shaped tea bag that is infused with long tealeaves instead of dust, which are indistinguishable tealeaf particles.

Along with the rise in the popularity of tea drinking over the years is the emergence of tea bag folding. Tiny van der Plaas, a woman from Holland, was the one who created this tea bag envelope inspired paper craft. She came up with the idea of tea bag folding, which is commonly known as Miniature Kaleidoscopic Origami, when she started to fold up a fruit tea bag envelope while thinking of a novel way of creating a birthday card for her sister.

Tea bag folding basics

Tea bag folding can be compared to origami, a popular Japanese paper craft, in the sense that both hobbies make use of paper to create various designs. However, tea bag folding creations are usually just used to decorate cards and are made using small matching paper squares. In contrast, the Japanese origami cannot only be used as decorations for cards and gifts, but also to produce paper replicas of different animals, flowers, and almost anything under the sun.

In the past, only tea bag envelopes were used for this paper craft technique. As more and more people all over the world learn of this paper folding art, however, paper manufacturers have started to produce specialty papers exclusively for miniature kaleidoscopic origami. Tea bag folding aficionados all across the globe have also modernized this paper craft art by coming up with more magnificent and intricate geometric designs and innovative and unique materials.

Kaleidoscope papers come in various colors and designs, such as flowers, stars, musical instrument, snowflakes, dragons, spirals, and even soccer balls. Most tea bag papers available in the market are printed in 90-100 grams per square meter paper.

Uses of miniature kaleidoscopic origami

Tea bag folding was traditionally used to decorate birthday cards. Now, you can use this colorful and wonderful paper craft as decorations of greeting cards for all occasions. Some people utilize tea bag folding to decorate photo frames, wall frames, wall clocks, and even scrapbooks. With just a bit of imagination and creativity, you can make use of tea bag folding to decorate almost anything and everything.

Moreover, tea bag folding can be considered as a relaxing hobby. If you feel that you are on the edge, stressed out because of too much work, try creating tea bag folding designs, and you will definitely loosen up a bit.

Tea bag folding materials

The most important material of this craft is tea bag envelope - if you want to be traditional - or colorful paper. For a more intricate effect, you might want to choose paper with geometric designs and elaborate patterns.

Other essential materials of tea bag folding are cutting mat, scissors, ruler (preferable metal edged), knife or cutter, and paper adhesive.

Popular tea bag folding designs

For people who are interested in starting a miniature kaleidoscopic origami, you can find a lot of materials and reference over the Internet. There are also some scrapbooking stores that carry tea bag folding materials and books that could help you learn this paper art. If you are on a tight budget, you can even just print tea bag folding designs that are available on the Net.

If you are a neophyte tea bag folding practitioner, you might want to start creating tea bag rosettes. This is a colorful flower-shaped design that can be used to decorate gifts, cards, and even bookmarks. Another beautiful tea bag folding design that has caught the hearts of many is the starburst design. You can use glitters so that your paper star design will look more brilliant and vibrant.

Tea bag folding is an easy and inexpensive hobby you can take on. Once you have started tea bag folding, you will surely get instantly hooked.

Lee Dobbins writes for http://tea.topicgiant.com where you can learn more about different kinds of tea and tea accessories like the teabag.

You probably think that Valentines Day is for just married people and couples but you are indeed wrong. You can always send a valentine card to anyone that you love or care for at this time of the year. This is being taught around the world to kids to show them love so they will spread love and not be hateful of anything or anyone. Kids will buy cards or most likely make them with and for their teachers and parents. In school in the lower grades everyone will have a valentine. By doing this everyone feels special and that someone cares for them.

This day in the year is also for adults to show other people that they love them as well. Dads might send chocolate and flowers to their wifes. Moms might send a valentine card to their sons. Kids might send a valentine card to a parent or grandparent to show them that they love them too

Good friends also send valentines to one another sometimes. Maybe a simple card that shows them youre there for them in a hard issue around that time of the year. When you send a card like this around the time of year this is occurring it will let someone know you still love and care and havent forgotten them. A lot of friends you have probably feel left out and ditched because you found a new relationship. You just need to show them you havent forgotten them at all.

When you send one of these cards to someone that maybe doesnt even have family it will mean more to them than anything else because they have nothing or no one else. Getting some type of greeting card will be nice to them even if it isnt a valentine card.

The big thing that has become famous in valentine cards is the wives and husbands that are off in the war in Iraq they will probably be missing you more than anyone else and you are probably missing them more than anyone or anything else. A lot of these men and women as well are off at war and may not have people to write to so they will like a greetings valentine card. A lot of groups send cards and thank you cards to the people who are stationed overseas to show them that they care for what they are doing in Iraq.

It doesnt really matter who it is you send a valentine card to the receiver will love that you though and remembered them no matter what. Especially if the one you send it to has nothing and they are lonely and need you.

Gregg Hall is an author living with his beautiful wife and family in Navarre Beach, Florida. Find more about Valentine's Day as well as special gifts at http://www.specialtygiftsplusmore.com

The knowledge of the ancient art of is very incomplete. Research and knowledge development are still going on every day. There are many different styles, such as Fumo Ryu (the spiritual style) or Iki (the bare Zen essentials only style) and the individual styles of various rope artists.

Picture a room, lit by candles. Shadows will dance on the walls and create the atmosphere in the room. That is exactly what you want to achieve in Japanese bondage - the battle between contrasts: beauty and fear, love and endurance, desire and despair, mental growth and humiliation, pain and lust.

It is an intriquing art that involves different levels: physical, mental and metaphysical. For the Kizsh (giver, donor, dominant, active partner) it is a balancing act, juggling with various different impulses. To the Uktorinn (recipient, submissive, passive partner - in Japan sometimes also called M-jo - "maso woman" - which can be anything from a female professional bondage model to a woman who just loves to be tied. The male recipient is sometimes refered to as M-o - "maso man") it is the ultimate journey to paradise.

Weaving or wrapping

"Japanese bondage" is an inadequate, superficial translation. While most people are only aware of the bondages, the lifestyle and technique encompasses much more - in techniques as well as background. Shibari Do, as the lifestyle is called, has roots in Japanese lovemaking and courtship, Ki-energy manipulation, traditional Japanese rope torture techniques, martial arts, theater, even ancient fashion and aspects of Zen Buddhism. The erotic use of bondages is only one aspect of the lifestyle. The technique in modern days is also used as a performing art, has healing aspects and in general is also a way to train the body and mind.

Shibari best translates as either "weaving" or "wrapping in ropes". Both translations refer to the interaction between ropes, the mind and the Ki energy meridians in the human body. Ki (or Chi in Chinese) is the energy of life; meridians are the channels, through which this energy flows. And since Ki - in Oriental philosophy - controls life inside the body as well as the interaction between the body and its environment, Japanese bondage has a direct influence on life. Ki can only flow and create a healthy situation through the eternal pattern of changes between Yin and Yang. The techniques strive to influence this pattern through magnifying both the Yin and Yang position on many different levels.

Origin

There are many myths and very few facts about the Japanese bondage origin. As a result, to date its origin remains unclear. A few references to what could be early forms of Japanese bondage provide some insight.

In the first half of the 17th century, during the Tokugawa Shogunate (Edo period) the dominant Japanese religion was not Shinto (that came about after the decline of the Togukawa dynasty) but a Shogun-backed form of neo-Confusianism. One of the most important Buddhist schools was the Nichiren Shu Komon School in Kyoto. It had eight temples in Kyoto (the 17th century capital of Japan) and was financed by members of the highest classes, including the Shogun himself.

The 17th High Priest of the school, Nissei, was a decadent, powerhungry man only interested in money, power and women. Under his reign members of the high social classes would gather in this school, tie up naked women in subdued and humiliating positions and leave them tied long enough to enjoy them and make drawings of them while in bondage, thus producing pornographic pictures. These gatherings were called "komon sarashi shibari". Very rare examples of such drawings have surfaced in Ukiyo-e (17th century erotic woodblock print) collections.

While this is one of the very few documented ancient uses of bondage as an erotic technique, the fact that such gatherings excisted in Kyoto supports undocumented rumours about Samurai in rural areas tieing up women and exposing them for erotic amusement. At these gatherings apparantly bondage techniques were used, borrowed from Hojo Jitsu (the art of tieing and transporting prisoners), Japanese rope torture techniques (Kinbaku) and Sarashi (the public display of criminals). That is where the martial arts roots (if any) of Japanese bondage are believed to originate from. Although often portrayed as such, there is no evidence of a direct, linear connection between Shibari and what is known as "soft weapon techniques" in most martial arts, of which Hojo Jitsu is one.

Komon Sarashi Shibari in itself brought about another misinterpretation. Japanese words can mean many different things, depending on their context. Komon can be translated as "anus", which lead to the misconception that Japanese bondage started out as a means to display women with their behind exposed. In this case however Komon means "advisor" or "consultant" (read: part of the temple staff and "follower of confusius"), which is a reference to the school where these gatherings happened and the participants.

Another intriguing source for the Japanese bondage origin and history are ancient Japanese police records. In the 17th century at least one traditional bondage was used by doomed love couples in ritualistic suicides. "Forbidden lovers" (usually lovers from different social classes) would sometimes use the "shinju" (a torso harnass) bondage to tie each other and next - firmly connected together - plunge into a river, a lake or the sea to drown together. For quite some time such ritual suicides were known as the "shinju suicides".

This is what Washington State University notes about "shinju suicides": "the most popular theme of both kabuki and joruri (forms of theater - ed.) was the theme of double suicide, shinju, as thwarted lovers, unable because of social restrictions to live a life together, desperately chose to kill themselves in a mutual suicide hoping to be reunited in the pure land of bliss promised by Amida Buddha. Many of these double suicide plays involved ukiyo themes, such as the love between an upper class or noble man and a prostitute. This is the theme of the most famous of the shinju plays (Sonezaki Shinju), by Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725). Such shinju plays often inspired a rash of real double suicides, so the Tokugawa regime in 1723 stepped in and banned shinju not only on the kabuki and joruri stage, but in real life as well."

In Japanese psychology the word "shinju" (meaning either "pearl" or "oneness of hearts" depending on its context) is still used for multiple suicides involving people with a strong bond.

In Japanese bondage terms "shinju" is a torso harnass, tied to bring out and erotically stimulate the female breasts (the "pearls"). Amazingly the word "shinju" in Japan is also used for shoulder-string type halter tops for women.

Is there any sort of heritage?

The answer to that question is currently impossible to provide with any certainty. It might be, but due to the lack of any historical reference it is unlikely. Yes, there are references to the art dating back to the 17th century. That however is also where any attempt to trace it back any further stops. As an erotic artform it apparently existed in the very mondain upper classes in Japan. But it has no, as many claim, linear roots to any martial art.

In fact the following assumption is much more likely. Most ancient cultures have seen combinations of power, sometimes spirituality and mysticism, and eroticism. Courtley Love and much earlier Celtic and Saxon rituals in Europe and the Kama Sutra are only a few examples of this. And yes, in most of such rituals weapons and warrior culture were woven into the rituals of courtship, lovemaking and sexuality. Power eroticizes! It always has. There is no reason to assume it was any different in Japan.

Shibari today

Contemporary "Japanese bondage" pictures usually have an entirely different background which - unfortunately - is pornography. Most originate from 1950-1980 produced Japanese pornographic videos. Their only "raison d'etre" can be found in the fact that the combination of naked women and rope sells. These Japanese movies can be seen as the Japanese answer to the emerging popularity of bondage in the American pornographic industry since the 1930's (John Willie, Betty Page and others).

The vast majority of Japanese rope artists from this period actually made their money rigging the bondages for these movies and some still do. Some, such as the late Osada Eikichi (a.k.a. "mister flying ropes") and Denki Akechi, created their own style and performing acts.

Dutch author, film maker and performer Hans Meijer (54) has written the 5 e-book series "Shibari Fumo Ryu" and is currently involved in de production of intructional DVDs about Shibari. He is the chairman of the Powerotics Foundation, an organisation dedicated to providing high quality information about alternative lifestyles.

In a fast paced, dynamic environment like a customer facing group, there is potential for great wins and some losses as far as attracting, gaining and retaining customers go.

So who is responsible for customer service? Anyone who touches the customer, either directly or indirectly is providing a level of service. This includes the people in such varied roles as: product planners, IT staff, shippers, billing clerks, human resources and service team members. Bottom line: service is everybody's responsibility. The service chain includes all people and functions that link up to final delivery to the customer. To find out who is in this chain begin at the end: who delivers the product to the customer? Then ask who provides a product or service to that person? Continue tracing it back to the originator. You now have your service chain.

It is critical that everyone in the service chain know the impact of their actions. Each person in the chain should focus on creating excellence in the following areas:

1. Create customer focused processes, not company focused processes. If what you are doing is done to make the internal processes work better and not better for the customer, how long will they be with you? Your customer wants to know that you put them above the inner workings of the company. Focus your efforts on your customers; then let the internal processes follow.

2. Respond to your customers inquiries quickly. Statistically the longer it takes to respond, the less likely your customer is to deal with you in the future. And remember, for every 1 customer that tells you they are dissatisfied there are 24 more out there that will never tell you something is wrong. But they will tell their colleagues and friends. And that hurts business, one way or the other.

3. Keep a positive service delivery attitude. It's a moment by moment attitude choice: you can present yourself positively, or allow yourself to get caught in the stress of the day. Don't be fooled: your customers hear what kind of day you are having.

4. Ask your customer how you are doing and Listen to the response. It's important to stop and check in with your customer. Ask how you can serve them better or better meet their needs. And then Listen to what they tell you. Respond to what they say. (Did you notice the capital L in the word Listen? That word is so very important, as is the action that goes with it that we decided it deserved a capital.)

5. Treat your customers with respect and integrity. This goes for customers both within your organization and outside it. Imagine what it would be like if all the interactions you ever had were based on mutual respect and integrity...

So you get the point: focus your efforts on your customer; make them feel special by listening to them and solving their problems. Be their champion and treat them well. Customers see it, feel it, know it and want to share it. So go ahead, make their day. Show them how you feel about them. It will make both your day and theirs a better one!

Anne Rose has been a faculty member for Canadian Management Centre since 1990 years, leading public programs, in-house customized programs and providing coaching services. She runs CMCs Customer Service public and on site programs, as well as Communications and Quality programs in-house. http://www.cmctraining.org/reg/category.asp?sid=0&cat_id=3