buttons. buttons. & more buttons!

Oh my!

Two posts in one day, how could you all get so lucky. Fact of the matter is, I have been working on a few little projects this past week(end) & I wanted to share them with you all but I just can't wait a day to space them out. I have the time and desire to post now so that's just how it's gonna be, peeps.

I wanted to show off a little something I have been obsessed with making. Button jewelry and hair accessories! I have to give my credit to this etsy store, button of hope. I love this concept & when I saw this etsy store featured on the Imperfectly Beautiful blog I wanted to order one of everything seriously. I restrained. I didn't think that my bank account would appreciate me doing such a thing. I just loved the buttons though so I mentioned them to my mother, a very talented seamstress. She said "Oh, yeah, I used to make buttons to match every dress I made you." That's when the crafty girl in me went "wait! I can so do this myself!" I went to Hobby Lobby and found my supplies.

At first I was thinking the fabric was the most costly part of this proj ect, but have since discovered that if you buy 1/4 of a yard of fabric, even 1/8 of a yard would work, you just need an itty bitty circle, maybe 2 inches across. The fabric button making kits have a little pattern for you to use on the back of the package.

I am somewhat addicted to making fabric covered buttons and seeing what I can attach them to. Here are some ideas of things you can make with the fabric covered buttons in large and small sizes.

A decorative hair tie:

I used the larger sized button for this, covered it in this fabric, and used the loop on the back to do a little twisty knot (not sure of the technical term) with the elastic hair tie, and there you go!

Next up is a pair of earrings:
The earring backs are posts and can be found in the jewelry making section of Hobby Lobby or Michaels or really probably any craft store. On this particular earring, I used 2 layers of fabric, a solid brown cotton fabric underneath a bit of lace. (*hint* if you are going to make earrings, or really any of the things like I created here besides the hair ties, use pliers or wire cutters to cut off the loop from the back of the button before assembling the button.)

Another pair of earrings:

These are pretty basic, but they are one of the more recent creations, I think I've gotten better at making earrings look more uniform. Go me :)!!

& here is a picture of the hair tie, earrings, a cute little bobby pin, and a necklace.

For the bobby pin: make sure that the loop is cut off of the back of the button. I bought these bobby pins at Hobby Lobby in the jewelry making section, they have a little circle on the end that makes attaching things to them super easy. For my bobby pin, you may notice that it has a different texture than the other creations, that is because I used a grosgrain ribbon. Now, the grosgrain ribbon I got is only wide enough to do the smaller buttons. I cut out my circle and after some trial and error I figured that I needed to do something about fraying. I was scared to burn it because I didn't want to burn my fingers, so I tried something else. I painted the edges of my cut out ribbon circle with clear nail polish. I let it dry for a couple minutes and then followed the same button making process as I have for all the others.

For the necklace: I just made the button (I removed the loop from the back) and attached a silver bail to the back, so it has a loop where you can string a chain or whatever you want to make a neclace out of. you can also leave the loop on the back attached and string your necklace through that. I didn't quite like how that laid on my neck so that's why I chose to do the bail.

Making these button jewelry and hair accessories is a lot of fun. And I feel like a lot of it is playing around with different things and seeing what does and doesn't work for you :)