I Heart Buttons!

Just as the Beads, Buttons and a Sprinkle of Glitter title would suggest, buttons are one of my joys. Never mind making me micro happy, they make me massive happy! So, dear reader, imagine my super duper excitement when I found a little box of buttons my marvellous Grandma gave me a few years back. I had lost them, and then my some mystical buttony force, I found them in my junk room and immediately started thinking about what I could make with my little gems.

After much deliberation, I decided to make this hanging button heart to add a touch of button love to my new home.

In my unprofessional opinion, its the little touches that do it- The large touches make a house, but the little touches make a home :) . By filling my home with handmade goodies, it's like filling my home with care, love and time taken to create. Mmmmm handmadeness.

These are the steps I took to make my hanging button heart, but of course, you can adapt and alter as you please.

1. Like a magpie, search for all the colours you like and group together approximately 20-25 buttons of a similar size. This is the step you can personalise the most- for bigger or smaller hearts use more or less buttons, and for a quirky feel you could try different sized or even different shaped buttons.

2. Cut a length of wire (I used beading wire with a 34 gauge, but that was just because I had it to hand. Next time I will try a slightly more sturdy wire as this was a little too flimsy for my liking) about 30cm long. This will not be the circumference of your heart but it's better to have a little extra and then you can trim the ends.

3. Thread on your first button to the bottom of the wire, leaving a 5-8cm 'tail', as you will use this to secure the strand at the end of your project.

4. Thread the wire through one hole of the first button, threading from behind, bring it through, thread it back out from in front, through the adjacent hole. Did that make any sense? It did to me but reading it back it sounds more tricky than it is. Hmmmm, comment if this causes you any real problems and I'll try and explain it better (chance is a fine thing!).

4. Do this threading technique with all your buttons.

5. When you have threaded all your buttons, twizzle the ends of the wire together, quite tightly, so that you have a wirey buttony circle, and trim off any excess.

6. Shape the wire circle into a heart (or any shape you fancy) and attach ribbon, wire or string for hanging. I used wire again, purely because it was to hand, and attached it to the top of the heart by wrapping the wire round the buttony wire a couple of times.

Taaddaaaaa!! A little touch of button love.

Toodlepip! xx

The Puuuurrrfect Photograph

This was too good a shot of camera-shy Mindycat to not go on my bloggeroo. What do you think she is thinking?



Enjoy!

Toodlepip! xx

Perfect Pine cones

As avid followers will remember from my conker post way back when, I'm a keen believer in bringing nature into the home to create a eco friendly yet attractive focal point for a room. Last month I had my blue vase conker display and this was all the rage in the land of the porch, but just like the song that goes "for every season turn, turn, turn", my conkers turned and grew fur. This was when I knew it was time to say "Buhbye Cool Conkers, Hello Pretty Pine cones!".

On a recent visit to Daddy-GlitterStitch, myself, Amy and Issobelle collected 2 huuuuuge bags of pine cones, took them home and set to work!

To give your pine cones a sparkly outfit, complete the following instructions (as usual, this is a simple project and you can do it a variety of ways, this is just the way I tackled it):

1. Make a mixture of one part water, one part pva glue and one part gold paint (I use the kiddie friendly kind- my cream carpets prefer it).

2. Hold naked pine cone ready for his new outfit but first- very important- shake it and blow it because Amy nearly died of fright when Mr Spider crawled out and attacked her. Loud screaming ensued and this was not conducive to my little glue-glitter-shake system!

3. With a toothbrush or a washing up brush jobby, roughly coat the cone in the glue mixture.

4. Pass the gluey pine cone to a consenting chum and sprinkle generously with glitter. We opted for gold for a rich feeling but this is obviously a matter of personal choice.

5. Tip of excess glitter and leave to dry.

Et voila! Sparkly gold affordable luxury!

Toodlepip! xx