Valentine's Day 2d Needle Felted Hearts Card and Keepsake

This instructable will give you all the steps you need to create your own Valentine's Card and Keepsake

You can purchase the kit for this project from the below link

https://www.tregaverfibreshop.com/product/valentines-day-heart-card-needle-felting-kit

Unpack your kit, and put the hearts into 3 piles, one pile of each size of hearts.

You will be creating designs on ONE heart of each size, the others will be used for the back of your project.

Unroll the carded wool

Gently pull it from the sides to fluff it out!

Split into 3 sections - you'll use one section for each heart, so you will need a large, medium and small amount.

To create a heart, take a small amount of fibre, and make it into a curl as pictured.

At this stage you only need a small amount - you can always add more later; it's easier to add more fibre than to have too much in the first place.

I like to use my old, blunted needles to hold the wool I'm going to be shaping!

Place your heart where you want it to be. On the largest heart, I decided to put a medium size cream heart at the bottom, and another 2 smaller ones floating above it.

To capture flyaway fibres, place your needle onto the felt and fold the fibres up towards the heart, and then felt them into place.

If you feel your heart is looking patchy, then you can add small bits of fibre to build it up.

Once you've completed your largest heart, create your designs on the smaller hearts too!

It's not really hemming, but you are going to create a 'hem' by needle felting the decorated heart onto the front of the other same size heart.

I like to start from the reverse, and then once I've done the back, flip it over and do the same to the front.

NB - You need to leave a small space on the top and bottom of each heart to add the string in the next step!

Measure the hearts so you have a long enough piece of string to go through all hearts

Make a look at one end.

Thread the string through each heart, then felt the top and bottoms of each heart to keep it in place.

Now is the time to finalise any little bits you may be unhappy with.

Due to the nature of our carded wool here at Tregaver Fibre, you may have longer fibres - these are from the lovely Devon and Cornwall Longwool sheep that the carded wool is made with!

If you don't want any fly away fibres, at this stage you can either felt them back into the hearts, or you can use a small pair of snips to cut them off.

Fold the aperture card into a Z shape

Take a felting needle, and VERY gently push it through the card to create a hole. If you are worried about your needle snapping, you can create your hole with a hole punch, knitting or darning needle, or whatever you feel most comfortable with.

Once you have a hole, poke the knotted end of the string (the hanger) through the hole, so your keepsake can be seen through the window.

Using a good strong cardboard glue, stick down the edges of the window 'frame' to the card behind it.

Do NOT use superglue, as this can react with wool to create heat and can be a fire risk.