Button Frenzy!

To start things off, let's skip straight past the beads and wire and findings and talk about BUTTONS!

I love buttons. I always have. I used to play in my mother's button collection while she sewed. I could wander through the button aisle at the craft store for hours. But, until recently, I didn't know how to sew (my partner, M, is a quilter and costumer and is remedying that deficiency). Even now it's not a particular skill - I just follow the seams and do what M tells me. So what do I have to put buttons on?

Oh, wow, have I found a way to use buttons.

The bracelets I'm working on right now can use two-hole, four-hole OR shank buttons, so I'm not limited by style, AND I can incorporate beads! Only certain sizes work, but I'm thinking of trying some different techniques to make this style a bit more versatile (little delicate button bracelets? Big cufflike button bracelets? Yes please!).

Of course, there's always the option of threading a large jump ring through one hole of a button to make a dangle. I've seen whole chains of buttons made that way - my mother-in-law-to-be, S, has quite a long one in gold jump-ring chain with orange and purple plastic buttons. But I have this horror of doing something that's been done too often - an obsession, if you will, with being different (I've always been like that. Ask my mom). So I limit that to charm bracelets and bobbin necklaces.

I think I'll call what I'm doing "wire weaving." I'll post pictures once I find the dang camera.

I hope this isn't a technique everybody else already knows about and I'm getting excited. That would be embarrassing.