Make your own button wreath

Now this isn't a tutorial as it's fairly simple to do but I will give you the benefit of what I have learnt making one!

This is what we are making - a button wreath. It's basically a Styrofoam ring and I covered mine in some grey velvet ribbon to hide the whiteness. I used simple flat pins to pin the ribbon to the styrofoam so if I get bored of my button wreath, I can undo the ribbon and use it for something else!

This is it halfway through - you can see why I needed the grey ribbon as the buttons (try as you might!) don't fit together easily and there will be small gaps. I wanted something that would blend in to the background but of course you could exploit the background and allow more to show through.

You will of course need buttons and because I have so, so many, I wanted to place them closely together but if you have less buttons then spaced out would be fab too* I used pins with balls on the end to add the buttons to the wreath. You can glue gun the buttons on but I wanted the option of being able to reuse them if I ever got bored with the wreath. I used one pin per button apart from on a couple of antique buttons where I used two - better safe than sorry! One thing I will point out is that you will need a lot of pins :) I bought 160 cream ended pins and used them all up with about 2 inches of wreath still to cover! Luckily I had some spare coloured ones that worked well too.

*oooooh - spaced out buttons with mini pom poms in the middle :) *runs off to buy another wreath shape*

I don't like traditional Christmas greenery wreaths as they remind me of cemeteries (my mum always puts them on family graves at Christmas) so they are out but hit me with any good alternative wreaths you have seen. Or if you have made one of your own then let me see it!

Happy Birthday to me!

You may have guessed by the title that it is my birthday today - I'm 34 :) And I'm a very lucky ducky - just look what I had to open this morning!

This record player brooch was bought by Tara - isn't it cute? It was made by Sugar Cookie and I love it!

Anya bought me this gorgeous purple button necklace - she knows me well! It's from Planet Button on Folksy.

I LOVE Mikiep so Matt ordered me this Best Friends print :)

And he also got me some badges from Bean Forest :) I love their badges!

And we also went to an antiques place* yesterday after lunch (we ate out!) where we purchased these 10 Martin Beck books for the grand sum of £2 - yep 20p per book :) I'm hoping we enjoy them (I've heard good things) but for 20p per book we thought we couldn't really go wrong!

*I know these aren't antiques but they have a shelf full of books at 20p each for Help the Heroes and needless to say I always seem to come out with something from there! Plus we did buy some things as presents but I can't show you them here just in case my parents get internet before Christmas :)

Featured on Flickr!

I love Flickr and think it is a great tool for having your work seen by lots of lots of people. There is a feature over there called Galleries and I came back from holiday to find that my work had been featured in 3 galleries :)

Gallery one - Gene the button chicken is off to the right at the top and how cool is that Button Bouquet?

Gallery two - my ever popular Cheeky Chicken gift tags are included in this one.

Gallery three - my Emil gift tags are featured here but they have since sold as part of the big wholesale order I completed last week.

And the bonus part of being featured in these galleries apart from new people finding me? The names of the galleries are Button Goodness, Upcycling...Trash into Useful Items and Recycled Crafts. Just the market I want to get myself into so its great that people are finding my work this way!

Oh and by the way - we have just come back from the huge jumble sale in my home town (£3 per black bag that you can fill with as much stuff as you like!!!) so be expecting a few posts over the week about the goodies we got!

Why I buy lots of buttons

Other than to run my fingers through and just look at them filling the (many, many) jars in my craft room that is!

To make fabulous Buttontastic chicken doorstops :)

And pretty button brooches :)

I also use lots of black buttons as the eyes for my chickens. See not just pretty things to look at although these next photos may be classed as button porn :) Enjoy :)

My button jars!

Matt found these - 50p per tin

My best EVER charity shop haul

Donated by a lovely, lovely friend

Rummage, rummage!

 

My Creative Space

Is a thinking space today as I am looking after a friends little girl today - hence the lateness too! What am I thinking about? These gorgeous items below that were given to me by a different friend who has been collecting them since she was 11! And she gave them to me!!

Gorgeous gorgeous buttons! Close ups below!

 

Aren't that little boy and girl just adorable??

I'm thinking hard about these buttons as I want to do something special with them but I'm not sure what. Maybe a button brooch for some of them? What would you do with them?

Meet Fred, Ginger and Mr Leaves and Berries

Wow - I must be on a roll as 3 chickens have been listed today :) One in each of my shops.

Meet Fred and Ginger - two buttontastic chickens who really like dancing :) They are in my Folksy and Artfire shops.

Can you guess what Mr Leaves and Berries favourite season is? Yep - Autumn! He is currently hanging out in my Etsy shop and he has just come to realise that Americans say Fall instead of Autumn. He has much to learn!

More buttontastic chickens will be coming soon hopefully!

Not a card maker

For a lady who doesn't make cards I seem to have been making an extraordinary amount of them recently!

5 more of my vintage button flower cards. The flowers are punched from catalogues etc that are then sent to be recycled and are jazzed up with a healthy number of vintage buttons. The bottom one is my favourite.

I bought 3 tubs of paper buttons last year on Etsy and have been trying to come up with a way to use them on my gift tags that doesn't look stupid - I haven't succeeded yet! I did however come up with a way to use them on cards. What do you think? Perfect for button lovers - I'll be keeping them all to myself then!!

Nice package!

No, not that kind of package :) The parcel kind that comes through the door delivered by the postman!

Look - it's pretty before I even opened it!

Even though I am de-stashing myself, I.COULD.NOT.RESIST this fabric! It's very me!

These cute buttons also jumped into my basket!

These buttons were included as a freebie - I already know what they will be used on :)

For your own fabulous buttons (and de-stashed fabric) then you must go and visit Mollimoo. Fabulous customer service too :D

Charity shop goodies

I had hoped to get out to the charity shops on Monday but forgot that I had to stay in to wait for a courier to collect a parcel - grrr. However I made it out to a local town, Accrington, yesterday and I am very glad I managed to go. Accrington hasn't let me down yet (I got my massive button haul from there) and it didn't let me down yesterday :) In fact if you search my blog for Accrington you will see the many bargains I have got. Anyway, back to yesterday's finds!


Innocent looking boxes you say? Hah - they house treasures :)

Gorgeous thread - the colours aren't captured here very well.

Buttons!

And some intriguing wooden buttons - some have been painted/drawn on already. I'm going to have fun playing with these!

Tara was wearing this funky half apron while I was taking the photograph hence the blurriness. She wouldn't stand still!

A book to chop :) It has two pages missing.

A lovely tablecloth with matching napkins still in it's original packaging! All of the above was mine for £5! I couldn't quite believe it either! I then went to another shop where I bought.....

A top for Anya - there are cute birds and bikes on the red fabric.

A faded pillowcase

A hanky for 10p

Two pretty linens - one was 30p and the other was 65p!

Two lots of bias binding for 50p

These placemats/napkins (there are 12 of various sizes) for £1.50. They are very sheer fabric - organza perhaps?

And this pretty dress from Marks and Spencers - it is brand new!! It cost me £3! It also has lots of nice details which are lost in the photo.

I got these 3 books for £1 in a different shop. Destined to be cut up as they have damaged covers/pages.

This Dirndl dress was the 'piece de resistance' of the whole trip. I spotted the back first so didn't realise it was a Dirndl dress until I turned it round. The embroidery is gorgeous and it fits like a dream :) The only snag is that is shows quite a bit of boob and while I do have it, I don't necessarily want to flaunt it quite *that* much! So the hunt is on for a top that I can wear underneath it - I may just go for black long sleeved at the moment. Or I can wear it backwards - looks just as good :) I'll just have to remember not to wear Heidi plaits on top of my head at the same time as wearing this dress as it may enter the realm of costume!