My godmother's birthday was this past weekend and she's had some recent health issues so I wanted to send her something a little special. I used another one of the embroiderable die cuts to make her card. This time I went with shades of purple and pink and I added beads.
I think you can see the beads better with this close-up. I was able to find a piece of the flat thin foam to use over the top of the card in order to make it mailable without having the beads puncture the envelope. That should also help prevent them from getting smashed in the cancellation process.
I used the leftover beads from the temperature project of 2022.
Last week, about the same time that I was working on this card, I was visiting Magpie's Mumblings and clicked on one of the links that she had that day regarding buttons which took me to a Pinterest page of which was like falling down the rabbit hole. I too have an extensive amount of buttons and I also have a Pinterest page where I have collected ideas for their use, but I hadn't been there for a while and was curious to see if there were any new ideas. Needless to say, I added a few more sites to my board that day but it also spurred me on to actually do one of the projects.
After I finished the card above I went on a search in my craft room for some white buttons that I had already sorted out into a bottle, but I couldn't find them even after checking the other possible rooms they might be in. What I did find was a pickle jar with a collection of buttons that I must have picked up at a flea market or garage sale. There seemed to be a decent amount of the white buttons that I was looking for so I brought the jar downstairs and started sorting things out.
When you buy jars of buttons I've found that there can be all kinds of things in them. This jar had a lot of metal snaps and clasps. Some new and some used.
It had buttons that were already clipped together, but mostly loose ones that weren't new. I sorted the ones with thread out of the bunch and later went through and cut the threads off.
After I'm done sorting, I gently wash the buttons that I'm going to use with a little dish soap and spread them out on a paper towel on the counter to dry. A lot of the buttons in this container were well-worn, especially those made from shell. You can tell by the difference in the thickness that shows it had been handled many times putting a garment on and off. I wonder if these days people still cut buttons off clothing they are getting rid of? I've been going through my closet this week because, well, I haven't worn a majority of the clothing in there since even before I retired and Lupus is coming for a pick-up later this week. There were a couple of items that were really not worth passing on and I did cut the buttons and ornamentation off those that had it. HWNSNBP laughed at me for doing that and for some of the other things I was saving he thought I should get rid of, but it felt good to have a lot more room in there.
I also needed some wire for this project and found some rolls of wire thin enough to go through the button holes. It came in several colors but I chose to use the silver for this project.
I did five of them and I'm trying to decide if I should add ribbon to the top or not. The satin ribbon that I have more than enough of to choose from seems a little stiff once I tied it. I think I need something more like seam binding or perhaps torn fabric to make the bow flowier (if that's a word).
I also started something else from some recycled mesh fabric that was wrapped around the last bouquet of flowers we got. I have some in purple and green that I've saved along with this kraft color that I chose to use. This is a 4" embroidery hoop and I just free-handed the wonky heart with the disappearing gel pen (which I haven't made disappear yet in the photo). These buttons were on the creamy side of white and some of them are even the back sides that I thought were more interesting. I used white embroidery floss to do the meandering stitch. It was a little precarious stitching on this as it tears easily and holes are almost always permanent. I'm thinking I want to add a little gold on here either in the form of thread or beads. It's still in the works.
Any bloggers out there ever get a post flagged for being inappropriate content? This is the first time that I've gotten a warning and I'm not even really 100% sure why. I did change the title as it originally referred to going down the rabbit hole only it said button instead of rabbit which I thought was pretty innocent, but apparently not. They didn't specify the wrong-doing. I'm sure there are sewing blogs that talk about button holes. We'll see if this posts.
