For the past month I have been planning my sons christening and my mum and myself have been making table decorations, I bought some plain white wicker hearts on wooden stands that I liked but I felt they needed brightening up which we did with pretty pale blue gingham ribbon and clear crystals. I had bought a lot of crystals for my wedding reception 18months ago and was pleased with how they brightened things up. I bought my crystals for the wicker hearts from Amazon where 300 clear flat backed self adhesive crystals cost just £1.65.

The crystals came with very little packaging, they were just stuck to sheets of thin clear plastic and put in an envelope. As I wanted to actually stick the crystals to the wicker hearts rather than just scatter them on the tables they had to be flat backed, I was pleased that they were already sticky too, it would have been a very fiddly job sticking them on with craft glue. The front of the crystals were faceted and shaped to look like little diamonds.

Each little crystal measured just 3mm so they were very tiny to work with, we found the best method was to put a little blob of blue tac on the end of a cocktail stick and use this to slide the crystals from their plastic backing and then stick them to whatever you are working on in this case it was our wicker hearts. The blue tac picks the crystal up and holds on to it making it very easy to place in the correct place.

We covered 12 hearts with crystals and it was a fiddly and time consuming job but the results were lovely. They transformed something very plain and basic into something that looked really special. The crystals sparkled and added little bit of glamour. I was very pleased with the results and had something unique and special to put on the tables.

If you like to do crafts, card making etc these little flat backed crystals are ideal, they can be used to personalise so many things. They would be a lovely addition to ribbon or wrapping paper making your present really unique and personal. I have ordered some more of these for this purpose and plan to personalise some presents this Christmas. They would make plain cheap balloons look special too.

I can certainly recommend these little gems, although fiddly to use they turned something very plain into something special, I definitely intend to use them again in the future.