Valentines Kiss Gift

Difficulty Rating -

This is an unusual and very sentimental Valentine's craft to make an impression of your own lips all puckered up giving your Valentine a Kiss. This is a great gift to send through the post, its not very heavy and it's a idea way to give your sweetheart a kiss on Valentine's day even if you can't be there in person - how romantic is that?

To Make Silver Valentine Kisses you will need...
Dental Chromatic Alginate to make the mould - this is available on Ebay
Casting Plaster from your local modelling or crafts shop
A kitchen towel cardboard tube or a loo roll tube
Sand paper
Silver Paint
Origional Chap Stick
A friend to help you - it is a 2 person job.

First the person who is having the mould of their lips made needs to (shave in the case of men) and then apply the original Chap Stick to the whole lips area.

You also need to cut the kitchen roll tube so that it is about 5 or 6 cm high. You will have to squash the tube in half slightly to cut it, but that will help to make the tube fit your lips. You also need the shape the bottom of the tube slightly to have a bit of a concave curve so that it fits snugly to your face.

To make the mould of your lips, you need to use Dental Chromatic Alginate. Dental Chromatic Alginate is super safe for using on the youngest child or most delicate body part as it is designed for use in the mouth to take dental mouldings. The great thing about using it as well is it changes colour as you work it, telling you what stage you should be at from mixing to applying to setting. The packaging will tell you how to mix the alginate, but be aware that 50grams of Alginate is more than enough to make a mould of your lips.

Make up the mixture, it will be pink as you are mixing. Because you need to pour the mixture, you need to start work with it whilst it is of a runny treacle type texture.

Ask the model to lay down with their lips puckered as if they are going to kiss someone - Lips closed, and the tube needs to be covering the whole lip area.

It's very important now not to get the giggles!

Fill the tube with the alginate mixture. It has a nice minty smell and feels soft and pleasant on the lips. Leave the alginate a few minutes to set.

Remove the mould from your lips, and runt he Chap Stick over the cardboard on the inside of the tube to prevent the casting plaster from sticking to it and leave to one side whilst you mix up the casting plaster.

The plaster should be made up of 4 parts plaster to one part water, and again you don't need very much of it. Mix the plaster and pour it into the tube to cover the lips mould. Try to make sure that the top surface of the plaster is flat so that the finished kiss will ‘stand' on its own without wobbling about. Leave to dry for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes you should be able to remove the cardboard tube from the kiss. You might need scissors to make a snip to start it off. Then remove the lips mould.

Use scissors to cut away any over hanging or unsightly parts. Leave for a further 15 minutes to harden off.

If there is traces of cardboard on your kiss, use sandpaper to smooth them off. You can use sandpaper to smooth any other areas as well.

Now apply a couple of coats of silver paint - Airfix model paint is ideal.

The bottom can either be painted silver or you could cut out some felt to stick on the bottom so that it wont scratch and surfaces that it is put onto.


To Make the Valentine Kisses Box to present your Valentines Kiss

To make a little box for your Valentines Kiss you will need...
Thin Card in contrasting colours - any colours you fancy
PVA Glue
Gift ribbon
And a pair of Compass, ruler and pencil.

With the main box card landscape on, in the middle but towards the top of the car you need to draw a 9cm-sided equilateral triangle (point up). Off each side of the triangle draw an isosceles triangle with sides 11cm long. Make down 3cm from the tip of each of these triangles these will fold outwards when you form the pyramid box.

Cut out the net of the box and score the folding parts and fold the box into shape.

With contrasting card cut out some assorted sized love hearts and stick them onto the box card.

When the glue is dry, put your Valentines kiss into the centre of the box and bring the sides up and fold the top tabs back. Wind a length of gift ribbon around the top of the box under the triangle tabs. Tie in a knot and make the ribbon ends curly by running the scissors down the ends.