Take a Break: Make Something with Buttons

I seem to be forever finding buttons, or friends give them to me Surprisingly, I’ve found a variety of uses for them-sew them on to pillows, wire them into the middle of the flowers I’m making out of discarded cans, jewelry, center of paper flowers and pinwheels, and the list goes on. With June being the month of graduations, Father’s Day, weddings and summer below are a variety of projects to try, some of which would make suitable gifts. I must admit that I’ve had a lot of fun in the past few days making button bracelets out of red, white and blue. Hope to sell some to raise money for our local historical society.

Some of the coolest buttons come with “shanks” on the back. These can easily be removed with a pair of pliers or clippers.

• Earrings, rings, tie tack or cuff links: Regardless of which one you want to make, the technique is the same. Shank buttons are the best to use for these types of projects. After removing the shank, glue the button (6000 E works well) to a ring flat top, earring or tie/cuff link back.

• Make a checkerboard (cloth, wood, a tile can all be used for the board) and use different buttons as the checkers.

• Stacking buttons for all sorts of projects: Take a smaller button and lay on top of a larger one. Use colored cord, embroidery floss or even dental floss and “sew them together.” Glue a brad onto the back of the large button and use for accents to cards, gift wrap etc.

• Cards: Take a piece of card stock and draw a shape on it. Pick out buttons that will fit in the shape and start gluing. For a wedding package or card, glue a variety of white buttons (shirt buttons work well) in a heart shape. Glue a button and add leaves around it so it looks like the center of a flower.

• Button Art & Ideas: Lots of cool photographs of different type of art made with buttons. Think “paint by number” using buttons in place of paint.

• Button bracelets: There are many different ways to make these, such as the one from Instructables. However, I used Stmpinjill-Button Bracelet and was quite pleased with the results. 

• Button Bow Tie There can’t be too many Dads out there with a button bow tie. 

• Button Bowl