Gothic Valentine – Broken Heart Valentine’s Gift – {Free Printables}

3 days until Valentine’s Day – I might just make it with this Gothic Valentine Tutorial.

I am not known for getting the right tutorials made for the right time, but one time has to be the first. Hopefully not the last.

I’ve never really celebrated Valentine’s Day, so I have no idea how to do it. But I sense that people give each other some gift to show their affection. I thought it could be done in a more Gothic way, that the usual pink stuff. And thanks to the BeMyGoth Facebook Page, where people kindly shared their ideas, I came up with this.

I’ve actually made the coffin tons of times many years ago – I found this tutorial when I were in 9th grade, I think…. Or a similar tutorial at least: http://www.phobe.com/coffins/more.html.
Now I thought I’d add a pattern that I’ve drawn. And a grungy letter, and of course, a broken heart.

You’ll need:

• Cardboard for the coffin
• Fabric of your choice to cover the coffin and the facing
• Fabric for your heart
• Stuffing for your heart
• needle and thread
• Scissors
• blood drop pearls (optional)
• Glue – hot glue gun is preferable.
• tools for cutting and marking the cardboard.
• Tape
• A printer

Let’s go!

I loved the quote “It broke – only you can fix it”, which Katrin Richter came with on the facebook page. Add the broken heart and a coffin – can we make it more Gothic than that?

First of all, print out the Broken Heart and Coffin Template (PDF).

Let’s start by sewing the broken heart.

It starts out as a proper heart. Cut out the heart in any fabric of your choice – I just found a scrap piece of crimson fleece in my stash, so that’s what I went with. I think velvet wold have gone better, though. Cut it with seam allowance of your choice.

Sew it all around except for a 3-5 cm gap in the side, so we can turn it inside out. Cut off excess seam allowance.

Turn the heart right side out, and add fluff! I had an old pillow, so I used the stuffing from that. I usually buy 9 DKR pillows in ikea (approximately $2 pillows).

Fold in the flaps by the gap and..

…sew it closed by hand as invisibly as possible.

Now commenceth the breakening! (Sometimes my head says silly things, and I have to get them out… :P)

I tied a bead to a piece of thread, and start sewing randomly into the heart. Pulling the thread, so it warped the heart in weird directions. Fasten the thread once in a while, by making a couple of stitches in the same place.

Warping my poor heart. ‘Tis a Gothic Valentine, you know….

When you think it’s warped enough, you can optionally add 2 blood drops (pearls) for effect.

I think you could add some decorative stitches as well, which I haven’t done here. I think that would be cool! (I apologize for some of the blurry images).

Adding the blood drops. I left them hanging a bit and did buttonhole stitches around the strings.

They’re hanging nicely, I think. It’s a sad Valentines Heart…

And now for the coffin. You cannot have a Gothic Valentine’s Day without a coffin of some sort!

Transfer the template onto cardboard – I used a pattern tracing wheel for this purpose. The inner line is the facing, and should be traced out by itself, and not inside the coffin as on the template.

Nicely drawn up onto the cardboard. I used a utility knife to cut out the cardboard coffin.

Trace the folding lines a bit with a “milder” tracing wheel, so it will fold better.

Fold everywhere, where folding is to be done.

And tape the coffin sides and lid sides together with a lot of tape.

Cut out the facings in cardboard too. These are just a couple of millimeters smaller than the bottom of the coffin and the lid, because we’re going to add some fabric.

See… I said, we were going to add fabric. Cut some fairly large pieces of fabric of your choice (velvet is really good). I used crushed taffeta here.

Glue that fabric onto the coffin and the lid – I haven’t used a system here – just glue glue glue! I used a hot glue gun, due to it’s effectiveness.

Don’t think about all the fraying – it will be concealed beneath the facing. Although you might want to cut off some fabric if it gets too bulgy.

Glue fabric onto the facing as well.

Now glue the facings onto the bottom of the coffin and the lid.

And the Gothic Valentine Coffin is ready for the Broken Heart, and the little note.

Just print one of these without scaling, and they will print 10 cm wide, and fit perfectly into the coffin.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial.

Don’t be shy to share it, if you know anyone who might enjoy it.

I used an old paper texture from this link: http://struckdumb.deviantart.com/art/Grunge-Texture-84411375 for the notes. The artist who made this have a lot more, so you can make your own, in any photo editing software.

The border in the note is from this place: http://starsunflowerstudio.blogspot.dk/2012/02/more-free-clipart-vintage-frames.html. There are also several vintage borders to chose from.

The font used is: The King & Queen font, and can be downloaded at dafont.com

Have a nice week!

kisses – Parnuuna