Valentines Crafting with Bostik

I was delighted to hear recently that we'd been selected as part of the Bostik Family Craft Bloggers Network. We do a lot of crafting here as a family, but the thing we're probably a bit rubbish at is doing seasonal crafts – instead I'm more inclined to go with what Little Miss C wants. The idea behind the Bostik network is that we're sent a package of craft goodies every other month and challenged to come up with something seasonal and to blog about how we made them. Perfect for directing some of our crafting mojo.

The January package was themed for Valentines day with lots of red and sparkly stuff and a couple of blank white cards too. Being sponsored by Bostik there was also a set of their foam pads and a tube of all purpose Glu & Fix.

Making a Valentines Day Card

I started off which was possibly the most obvious thing to do and made a simple, but effective Valentines Day card.

I took the foam sparkly read heart and affixed a number of the foam pads on the back of it. I then very simply attached it to the front of one of the white cards. The foam pads make the heart stand out and give the card a lovely 3D effect. They were also easy, if a little fiddly to use. I arranged them on the back of the foam heart so that I could ensure it was stuck on evenly and then LMC had the job of removing all the backing on them. A great opportunity to practice her fine motor skills.

I'd actually really happily have bought something like this in a shop – and I'm guessing they might have charged £2.50 or similar, so I'm really pleased with the result.

Valentines Mobile

When it came to making something with the rest of the kit contents I knew that I wanted to make a decoration of some sort. Mr C and I don't really go in for gifts for Valentines Day – mainly as his birthday and our wedding anniversary quickly follow it – but I though something nice to display in the house would work well and I set about trying to make a Valentines mobile to hang up.

To make this work properly I also raided our box of recycling that we keep for use in craft projects, my sewing basket and our wardrobe. In addition to the Bostik Glu & Fix we therefore also used the red sparkly felt, the red card, a heart shaped cookie cutter, a cereal box, some red embroidery thread and a metal coat hanger (the sort that you get from the dry cleaners).

Firstly I then used the heart shaped cookie cutter and the foam heart that we used to make the card above to draw heart shapes on a piece of card cut from an old cereal box and also on the sheet of red card provided. I then used the Glu & Fix to attach the red sparkly felt to the cereal box card.

Once this was dry we cut all of these out carefully so that we had a pile of card and card backed felt hearts.

I then paired up the hearts and on one of them I applied more Glu and Fix on the back of it (round the edges and down the middle of the heart) and laid the end of a piece of red embroidery thread along the centre line of the heart so that a long length was sticking out of the top.

The second half of the heart was then used to sandwich the thread in the middle and once the Glu & Fix dried it was firmly enough attached so that you could hang the heart by the thread.

I then tied each of the hearts on to the horizontal bar part of a white wire coat hanger. I arranged them so that the felt and card hearts were mixed up and also so that the threads were all different lengths.

Had I had all the hearts made out of the same material then I might have been tempted to do them so that each one was slightly longer than the last one going across – thus making them be arranged in a diagonal line. I tried that out here, but the look just wasn't right with the different materials.

I'm thrilled with the final result – simple, but effective – and I think that this will also look really nice on the wall in my sewing cabin once we've got it cleared out again. It would also look good in a child's bedroom and using different shaped cookie cutters to make the shapes you could do something with stars or possibly even snowflakes for Christmas. The possibilities are endless.

Disclaimer: We were sent a pack of crafting goodies as part of our role on the Bostik Family Craft Bloggers Network.