Valentine Craft: A Key, A Heart, And A Song

Valentine’s Day is such a sweet holiday – in more ways than one!  It is fun to celebrate with a little festive decor to help set the mood. I put together some vintage pieces to come up with a Valentine craft that I just might display all year long.

My project is really quite simple, I combined a variety of romantic pieces to feature in a shadow box. The nice thing about shadow boxes is that they are deep enough to hold many layers of items.

For some reason, a certain phrase always sticks in my head when I think about Valentine’s Day. “You are the key to my heart”, just sounds so romantic. That is the phrase I had in mind for my little display. I started by layering the key elements.

My Valentine Craft Display

Okay, so maybe the little button was not a key element! But I love to embellish with buttons when I can. Anyway,I had several hearts that I had purchased from Joann’s.  I layered a couple of wooden ones and one tin heart and glued them all together with E6000 craft glue.  Then I added a vintage key and the little button for fun. Now it was time to prepare my frame.

Next, I took a small square shadow box frame, that I had purchased, apart.  I threw out the blue insert paper and planned on covering the back of the frame with a vintage song sheet.

All I did to get the paper the right size for the frame back was to trace the back right onto the paper and cut it out.  Whenever, I need to glue paper flat, I like to use spray adhesive.  I sprayed this to the inside of the frame back and carefully laid my paper in place.  The glue grips right away so you need to be very careful as you are aligning the paper with the frame to get it right.

Then I glued my heart ensemble to the paper lined frame back.  I used my E6000 craft glue again for an extra strong hold.

I used tacky glue to add a little burlap interest to the bottom of the shadow insert.

Now it was time to put the all of the pieces back together!  And, this is what I ended up with for my shadow box valentine craft.

After looking at the finished craft, I’m thinking that sometimes simpler is better. I’m not quite sure how I’m liking the burlap at the bottom. For me, it detracts from the rest of the display. What do you think?  Should it stay or should it go?

Check out these other Valentine’s Day craft ideas in a rustic style.