button it up!

I mentioned in my last post that one of my lovely Bead + Button Jewelry students, Marty, brought in her antique family buttons to show us, along with some gorgeous vintage Bakelite pieces she’s found more recently. She was kind enough to let me snap photos of her beautiful collection, including the magical button tin that holds it all!

These tiny shell buttons and the larger carved ones were passed down from her grandmother.

Look at these adorable teeny-tiny doll buttons, too!

These two pairs of earrings on the right are made with some other treasured family buttons — the tiny jewels are hand-set one by one in these settings. Beautiful!

And she has been collecting lots of beautiful Bakelite buttons to add to the heirlooms, too.

She mentioned that she’s found lots of her favorites through Jocelyn, who also sells buttons at The Needle and at Oregon State Button Society shows.

I can attest that Jocelyn has marvelous buttons! Here are some of my favorites from her booth at the show I went to in April.

A few other bits and pieces to mention…

-A good-sized chunk of Button It Up is now up on Google Book Search if you’d like a peek at some of the housewares and embellishment projects! Please give it a good rating if you like it, that would be great.

-Urban Craft Uprising was fantastic! I’ll have pictures of the fabulous Button Mania workshop Kristen Rask and I co-taught to share soon (my laptop is full to the brim and I need to start moving old photos somewhere else before I can even retrieve what’s on my camera)… but in the meantime, check out her new book, Button + Stitch, which is available for pre-order on Amazon!