Erin FoxNext time you think about tossing away old buttons, think again and pop them into a jar instead. When your jar becomes full, start getting crafty with your button collection. Working with buttons is addictive and you will soon find yourself creating lots of different projects and organising colours into different jars.
Use different coloured buttons to create greetings cards for each season of the year.
For the button tree card you will need: brown card, brown paint and a paintbrush or you can use brown felt or other materials, glue and a selection of buttons in autumnal colours.
Roughly paint branches onto the card and leave the paint to dry. Dot a little glue onto the back of each button and place them along the branches. Leave the glue to dry before standing the card upright.
For the holly card, draw a holly leaf on some card and cut out. Pin this to some green material and cut around the template. Remove the pins and glue the fabric leaf to a card or gift tag. Repeat so you have two leaves. Glue three red buttons just below the leaves and allow the glue to dry.
Arrange buttons into flowers for summer themed cards or change the buttons on the tree to pink and white ones for a cherry blossom tree in the spring.
As well as creating picturesque cards, you can make a variety of different projects with your collection. Select your favourite buttons and spell out your initials to customise your favourite notepad or to brighten up your school bag.
Use the sparkliest buttons you can find to create jewellery; weave some yarn through the button holes to create bracelets and necklaces and glue buttons onto the ends of hair slides. Turn a plain old photo frame into a work of art by covering it entirely with buttons.
You can also make creepy crawlies out of different sized buttons; line up a row of green buttons to make a caterpillar.
Take a large black button and a small black button, glue them together then sew onto a piece of fabric. Stitch four legs on either side of the large button for a spider. You can sew this onto the shoulder of an old jumper so it looks like a spider is crawling up your back.