Button Love

simple bezel on a mother of pearl button

There are buttons and then there are little round works of art that simply should not hide in a button box. You can fairly confidently take it as a given that I have a stash of buttons. I will wax lyrical over them another day. Today I'm showing you just one really beautifully smoothed and carved mother of pearl coat button. I found it at a flea market, lurking among some frighteningly garish plastic buttons, with a broken shank. I rescued it for the princely sum of 50p and the promise of a new life. Because the back of the button was a bit uneven I attached it to a backing with a beaded bezel.This also gave me something to attach a brooch pin to without having to break out the ...whispers... g.l.u.e..., or as my chums in the Guild refer to it... 'the G word'.

In the spirit of recycling and the absence of a really good commercial equivalent, I use plastic from the side of a milk carton... it is just the right thickness to support a bit of bead embroidery, but thin enough to be fairly easy to stitch through... it also survives if your brooch accidentally ends up in the washing machine... which is why I don't use cereal box card any more.

Sew the brooch pin to one side of the plastic, the base rows of bead embroidery to the other, lining things up so the pin is a wee bit above centre so the brooch will lie nicely. Then apply a piece of Ultra Suede to cover up the stitching (I cut two weeny slots for the ends of the brooch pin to fit through, and yes a dab of the G word works a treat at this stage. trim it all flush to the embroidery and finish off the edges with a row or two of beading.

Button love in a different place

The bezel is a simple peyote ring, the edge of the backing has a row of stitching to hold it all together, which is hidden with a row of double Delica beads embroidered in place, then lots and lots of little beaded leaves which start and finish just under the Delica beads. I kept the colours really simple, and the bead types quite plain too, originally made for a quite sombre event, I find I wear it often because somehow the colours have a chameleon quality.
The first photo shows my Button love brooch nestling in a new Hebe I've just potted up, it's called 'Heartbreaker' and is a lovely vivid magenta with cream and soft sage green varegation. The second picture shows the pin hanging from a nail on a stone wall. I love the way that this paler setting brings out all the sand and creamy coloured beads I used, whereas the other one really brings out the dark maroon beads.