Buttons Galore!

Have you ever run your hands through a big box of buttons? It's a really lovely feeling having all those smooth buttons running over your fingers. For me it brings back memories of my childhood. You see, my Mum was a great sewer and she had an extensive collection of buttons that she kept in old biscuit tins. Most of them were rescued from garments which had seen better days and many of them still had the thread attached to the back of them. Sometimes there was even a little tuft of fabric attached as well which identified the garment it was from. It was a pleasant way to spend a half hour rummaging through the tins, sorting the buttons into their colours, shapes and sizes. Ah.... the simple things in life! Recently I had the chance to play with a large stash of buttons courtesy of the fine folks at Blumenthal Lansing. No stray bits of thread or fabric attached to these buttons but as I emptied them out onto my bead mat, I couldn't resist scooping them up and letting those smooth buttons cascade over my finger tips and back on to my workspace.... what a joy! And just as I had done as a child, I sorted and categorised them but this time I was doing it to see what worked together. They were all shapes and sizes: some were metal, some were plastic but looked like metal, some had shanks and some had holes. There were even duplicates of some of them. There was such a variety of colours and themes and I immediately knew that there were some jewellery pieces hiding amongst them so I set about looking to see what worked together. And amongst them I found a huge silver button with a deep dish ready for a jewel to be inserted, which in this case would be a pearlised button. I teamed the buttons up with some crystals to fill the gaps and a ring blank. But all I had on hand was a curved shower-disk type which wouldn't work long term but it was OK as a stand in until I got a flat one. And here's the finished knuckle duster......You can see that I changed my mind about the pearlised button and chose a textured metal button topped with a Swarovski crystal instead. How fun is that! And I'm sure that if you didn't know I'd made this ring from buttons that you never would have guessed it! Now, back to rummaging through my new collection of buttons - I'm sure there are plenty more pieces of jewellery amonst them. 'Til next time, Myléne