With just one day to go before Valentine’s I’m sure many of us are running out for chocolates, flowers and cards to express our love. I was no different, except instead of visiting my closest Hallmark, I spent an evening with a friend and wine crafting hand-made valentines.

I’ll take you back to the beginning. About a year ago my friend Jenn Parker and I were having brunch and she shared an idea with me. It was her dream to start a crafty company that allowed people to learn new crafts and skills from experts in a low stress environment. About three months ago Craft Social was born. Jenn holds a variety of classes (knitting, needlepoint and calligraphy, to name a few) at spots across Boston. She serves wine and cheese as her guests get down to business creating.

Last week my friend Rachna and I attended an embossing class taught by Sarah Freni. Sarah is an art school-trained graphic designer who was looking for something she could do from home after her son was born a year ago. She took her skills and started getting crafty making personalized stationary and invitations.

Sarah explaining our stationary-making lesson

Over the aforementioned wine and cheese, she taught a perfectly sized group how to use ink and an embossing gun to make valentines. While I usually think of embossing as ink being pushed into cardstock, at this class we applied ink on top of paper (in cute heart shapes), sprinkled pink embossing powder to that ink, which when heated serves as glue, and used the embossing gun to heat the powder to melt into onto the paper.

Rachna working the embossing gun

We all worked independently, admiring and complementing each others’ work, sharing tips on how to best design our cards or envelop liners. It was such a fun night, and I had a handful of adorable hand-made valentine’s to send to some sweethearts.

The finished product

If you are crafty, or want to be, check out one of Craft Social’s selection of classes. You may find a hidden talent, and at the very least you are in for a fun night!

A cute finishing touch

While I did receive a complementary class, all opinions are my own.