With Valentines Day closely followed by Mothers Day and Granny’s birthday it all been about Hearts and Flowers crafts with Baker Ross here lately.  We received a bumper selection from the crafting company and Monkey’s enjoyed getting creative after school.

Fused beads kits are a new idea for us.  Monkey did receive a set for his birthday, but we’ve not a chance to make a start on it yet.  But Monkey decided he wanted to make something for Granny and the Flower Fuse Bead kit would give him the perfect opportunity.

The kits come with a base plate, lots of coloured beads and a template.  So Monkey was soon busy sorting beads and creating his flower.

He tried to put the template underneath the base plate, to follow the pattern that way, but it’s not scaled, so it’s much easier to have the template in front of you, and work that way.  It’s a great set for working on manual dexterity and hand eye coordination.

We did have a beginners disaster – our kit didn’t come with special ironing paper, and I didn’t realise this was needed, so the first two flowers Monkey made didn’t go to plan unfortunately.  But I googled the problem and found greaseproof paper would work, so Granny will get her flower for Mothers Day.  I’ve checked with others who have also received this kit, and their sets all came with paper, so we were just unlucky.

Once you created your design on the template plate, cover the top with ironing paper/greaseproof paper and iron over the design for 10 seconds.  Peel the paper off and voila, your design is complete and fused and you are ready to create your next masterpiece.

Hearts and Flowers crafts with Baker Ross led Monkey on to the Heart Lantern Kits. These are really easy to create and are fairly mess free.

You get the lantern itself and a range of tissue paper to fill in the sides.  We used PVA glue to stick the tissue paper down, and glued the edge of the lantern together.  The bottom folds in on itself like a box and you fold the loops of the top of the lantern through the slotted sided.  A really quick and easy craft for Valentines Day.  Monkey enjoyed this activity, even if his face doesn’t quite agree!  Don’t you just love grumpy school children.

Sticking with the Hearts theme, Monkey decided on a rather minimalist approach to his Heart Wooden Decorations kit.  After painting them and threading through the ribbon I had expected him to go crazy with foam stickers, felt tip pens and his self adhesive jewels. But no, he decided one stick on pom pom was enough.  We may well revisit this before Valentines Day when he’s feeling slightly more creative.

The Flower Wooden Key Holder kit certainly appealed to Monkey and he get straight down to painting and used the Pink and Silver Stick on Acrylic Jewels for decoration.  The kit comes with 4 dowels which twist into the pre-drilled holes easily, and a hessian cord to make a hanger.

We have some Card Picture Panels to complete and they are the perfect size for some handprints, so watch out on my Instagram feed for our artwork on those soon!  You might even spot our Self Portrait blanks artwork soon too.

Have you got plans to get creative foe Valentines Day and Mothers Day?  Would love to hear your ideas.

disclaimer:  we were sent the items mentioned in exchange for an honest review