Monday, July 25, 2011

Who's got the button?

Of course, as soon as I posted a link to Iron Craft, they moved. The site has been expanded into Just Crafty Enough. That's okay, though, because I forgot to say I was bringing them up last time in part as a source for summer fun ideas. There is at least one mom on there who does the challenges with her two sons each week, and posts all three projects on the Flickr feed.

I was in transit yesterday and today and almost forgot it was a posting day, but I happened to be looking at crafts to reuse buttons and other items anyway (buttons because the Sew-Op has tons of them - not because the latest Iron Craft was about them!). I'll start with about.com's list of frugal crafts for kids, since it has a wide range of projects.

Non-clothing button projects fall into two categories: using them as embellishments rather than fasteners, and using them as structural elements of crafts. I saw projects covering boxes, teacups, picture frames, and the edges of bulletin boards with buttons. My favorite in that vein was buttons in place of numbers on a clock.

You can glue buttons to magnets, string them on wire or elastic thread for jewelry, create mosaic pictures with them, or thread them on hairpin-shaped wires to stick into the soil of houseplants or a vase for a button bouquet. You can turn stacks of buttons into keychains and zipper pulls, glue them to headbands and hair clips, or use pipe cleaners to make posable button creatures.

If you have a lot of patience, you can weave embroidery floss through buttonholes to make coasters or other flat items, either rectangular or hexagonal.

The idea I'm going to try to find a use for is the embroidered button-fruit on these napkins. Have at the button box!

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