In tea leaf reading, the first thing you need to do- before you even put the kettle on- is throw out any books that tell you what each symbol signifies. I have a book that says: "Ace of Spades: the end of a relationship Beehive: an important invitation...." Throw that book out. Or wrap it up and give it to your grandma for her birthday.  The second thing to do is to kick-start your intuition and get down to it. Reading teacups is something that's been passed down through my family and although I'm not an expert at it (yet), I have a good track record so far, so here's what I do. When I'm looking into a teacup, the closest thing I can compare it to is looking at one of those 3D pictures where an image pops out at you. You're looking at it, not knowing what to expect, but you're concentrating with eyes that you don't normally use and keeping your mind open for whatever happens to appear. If you concentrate very hard, chances are you won't see too much, but if you relax and let your mind wander, gradually things will come into focus. This requires a bit of practice, but for me, I could see I was making progress right away, which is always encouraging with this sort of thing. Once you start getting the pictures in your mind's eye, then comes the interpretation. Some of the pictures speak for themselves. In the last reading I did for myself, there was a man offering me a huge bunch of flowers and several days later a friend did send me some flowers, but usually the translation isn't so literal. For example, the man in my cup was essentially offering something to me, so it could have been that he was thinking of giving me any kind of gift, and not necessarily something physical. It could have been advice, conversation, or a joke. So when you get your pictures, just let your mind go and the leaves tell you what translation you should make from them. With the beehive example above, it could mean that the tea-drinker should be wary of being "stung" by someone. Don't use your imagination- rely on intuition and just let the thoughts come to you. In my experience, the better I know the person I'm reading for, the more difficult it is to give a good reading. I seem to give excellent readings for people I've just met, average ones for people I know well, and terrible ones for myself! Maybe this is because the more knowledge you have of a person, the more you may be focusing on that information rather than what the leaves are trying to tell you. So once again, an open mind is an important part of reading tea leaves. And finally, a word of warning. In teacup reading, as in all forms of divination, if you happen to see pestilence, mayhem and herpes in someone's reading, please don't scare them! On the one hand, you could be misinterpreting what you're seeing, and on the other, the whole point of divination is to use it as a guide to better living, so it's far nicer to advise someone to keep up-to-date with their flu shots than to tell them that they're going to be bed-ridden for the next week!