It’s V-Day, and you’ve forgotten to splurge on a fancy gift. Avoid a grumpy other half with TOS staff’s easy, DIY solutions

                                                   

ALL CUT UP WITHOUT YOU
Find an old-school photo booth. Shoot your body in four segments, but be careful when it comes to your legs – it’ll require you to quickly hop on to a swivelling stool in between shots. Buy a blank card and envelope. If the card is black, then also buy a pen with metallic ink. Cut the photo strip into the four segments. Tape them on the front of the card haphazardly. On the outside, write ‘I fall to pieces…’; on the inside, continue with ‘…without you’. Cecilia Wong 
Photo booth in People’s Park Centre food centre, corner of Havelock Square and Eu Tong Sen Street; $6 per strip. A5 card and envelope, $6; Sakura gold pen, $1.70; both available at Bookbinders, #04-20H/K Takashimaya Shopping Centre, 391 Orchard Rd (6737 0445). 

 

YOU MAKE MY HEART SING
Pile on the nostalgia by purchasing a Walkman and blank tape. Record from Class 95 FM’s Love Songs; keep an ear out for classic/cheesy love songs like The Bangles’ ‘Eternal Flame’ or Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’. If you’re really feeling it, add in a personal spoken message at the end. Customise the cassette sleeve with a song lyric or a love note, but don’t forget the track listing on the reverse. Give your compilation a suitably cringe-worthy name, like ‘You’ve got me all mixed up’. Georgia Reeve Second-hand Walkmans, $5-$10 and cassettes, $1; both available from Sungei Road Flea Market (Thieves’ Market), Sungei Rd, between Jalan Besar and Kelantan roads. 

 
SINCE YOU LEFT, I CAN BEARLY KEEP IT TOGETHER
Purchase a bear-in-a-tube. (Yes, they exist.) The DIY Bear ($10) comes with instructions, bear filling, faux bear hide, thread and a pair of eyes. Purchase a spool of red wool ($4), a packet of red merino wool ($4) and size 13 needles ($3) at Spotlight. Sew the bear’s body and limbs. Depending on how bad a state you’re in, you can dislocate its limbs, but at the same time keep them hanging by a thread by using the yarn of red wool. Attach only one of the eyes provided. For the other, simply stitch an ‘X’. Place bear on top of red merino wool, and scatter the loose limbs about the ‘blood’. Sabrina Lee 
DIY Bear from Furry Faces, #01-01 Far East Square, 5 Amoy St (6438 2318). Spotlight, level 5, Plaza Singapura, 68 Orchard Rd (6733 9808, www.spotlight.com.sg). 


I FLIP OVER YOU
First, sit down and think – what’s the most romantic thing you could imagine stick figures doing? Running toward each other in a meadow? Dancing under the stars? Once you have a short storyline for your flipbook (no worries, it doesn’t have to be complicated), get a pack of sticky notes and a sharp 2B pencil. Block off one or two hours, and start drawing from the back of the pad – one frame per sticky note page. If the pencil drawings are dark enough, use the outline of the last picture you drew to figure out how to draw the next frame of the flipbook. End with a sappy message. Laura Dannen 
2B pencil, $3 per pack of 12; sticky notepad, $1.20; both available at Popular. Go to www.popular.com.sg  for store locations. 

 
SWEETS FOR MY SWEET
Buy 12 to 15 muffins. Pick a variety – banana, chocolate, walnut, strawberry – and organise them in a heart (to make sure he/she gets the message). Scatter the petals of a dozen roses in the centre, or around the heart shape. Tear up some of the petals into smaller pieces to ‘fi ll’ in the gaps. Charlene Fang 
Muffins, $1-$1.50 each; John’s Bakery, #01-58-60 Amoy Street Food Centre, corner of Telok Ayer and Amoy streets (6220 2203). Dozen magnum roses, $9; Far East Orchid, 555 Thomson Rd (6254 6662).