Valentines Day Heart Bracelet and Earring Set

This Valentine’s Day heart cuff bracelet and earrings from AMACO combines moldable plastic with felt for a fun craft project.

Materials:

• Felt Works cuff bracelet – black
• Felt Works 100% wool felt embellishment balls
• 2 stick Friendly Plastic Metallic Solid Gold/Black
• 1 stick Friendly Plastic Metallic Solid Fuchsia/Black
• 1 stick Friendly Plastic Metallic Solid Mauve/Black
• Earring findings
• Gold headpins (4) or gold colored wire

Tools:

• Needle and thread
• Wire working tools
• Crop-o-Dile or small hole punch
• Small and large heart cutters
• Heat IT heat gun or similar
• Ranger craft sheet
• AMACO Friendly Plastic work mat
• Small bowl of water with a few drops of olive oil
• Needle tool with heatproof handle

Steps:

1. Punch small circles of Friendly Plastic from the fuchsia, gold and mauve sticks. You will need approximately 15 of each color – you can mix sizes if you are using the Crop-o-dile as your punch.
    
2. Place a stick of gold Friendly Plastic on the Friendly Plastic work mat on top of the Ranger Craft Sheet. Place Fuchsia and Mauve dots of Friendly Plastic on top of the gold sheet and heat with a heat gun until the pieces meld together.
    
3. Repeat Step 2 with a piece of Fuchsia Friendly Plastic, this time adding Gold and Mauve dots.
    
4. While the Friendly Plastic is still warm, take the larger heart cookie cutter and dip it into the water and olive oil mix. Use it to press out two heart shapes from the gold Friendly Plastic. Allow the Friendly Plastic to cool in the cutter before removing it so it doesn’t stick to the cutter.
    
5. Repeat step 4 and make four small gold heart shapes using the small cutter. Use the small heart cutter to press two small heart shapes from the Fuchsia Friendly Plastic.
    
6. Take two of the small gold heart shapes and place them back to back with a headpin running lengthwise between them – place it in the middle so the pin extends above and below the heart. Heat the hearts gently until they just melt together. Repeat with the second pair of gold hearts.
    
7. Take your back to back gold hearts and make a small loop in the headpin above the heart and a second small loop below it.
    
8. Pierce one black felt bead with A headpin, clip the end of the headpin wire to around 3/8th inch in length and make a small loop in the top. Attach the felt bead below a heart and attach the heart/felt bead combination to an earring wire. Repeat to make the second earring.
    
9. Overlap the two large gold hearts and heat gently so they just meld together but so they still remain dimensional.
    
10. Heat the metal end of the needle tool, dip in the oily water and poke small holes in the hearts. You will need two in the middle of the Fuchsia hearts and four along where the gold hearts overlap.
     
11. Take a needle and thread and sew the hearts onto the felt bracelet passing the needle and thread through the holes you just made. Place the gold hearts centrally on the bracelet and add fuchsia hearts either side of them.

Tips:

• Friendly Plastic can be melted using a heat gun such as the Ranger Heat It tool when placed on a heat proof sheet. Alternately you can heat it in the oven or in warm water.
• Friendly Plastic can be cut with a cookie cutter – simply dip the cookie cutter in water which has had some olive oil added to it in it before cutting as this will act as a release agent preventing the plastic from adhering to the cookie cutter.
• A Crop-o-Dile is a good tool for cutting small circles of Friendly Plastic to use for polka dots.
• To create some dimension in your piece such as you see in the larger hearts in this project, take the stick of Friendly Plastic with the heart shaped cutter embedded in it (while it is still warm and pliable), and place it on top of a damp kitchen sponge and press down. This puffs up the heart to a dimensional shape.