Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?

I love making new things out of things that other people might discard - or in other words, other people's crap. :-)

One thing that I like having on hand is hand-made buttons. I've made buttons out of polymer clay in the past, and that is great fun, but another way to have fun, unique buttons available is to use bottle caps.

I don't ever drink anything in a bottle, so I had to rely on my brother-in-law and son to provide some bottle caps for me. They come in every color and variety. I even got some larger Snapple caps that I wasn't sure would work, but they did.

I've had these waiting for me since Christmas - so last weekend I decided it was time to get button-moving.

I first head to the small slab of cement holding my hot-water-heater in my dirt-floor basement. A sort of sad thing to picture, I'm sure, but my normal cement-pounding location was not in service.

I use a hammer and a small piece of scrap wood to pound the bottle caps flat. Next, a nice strong construction nail creates the sewing holes in the buttons.

Whew. Now that I'm back upstairs, I get out my handy-dandy spray primer. A couple coats on both sides of the buttons and they are ready for color.

This time, I really wanted to use some fun, springy colors. I think I found some good ones!

A couple coats of spray paint on both sides followed by spray poly - and I have some fun new buttons to use on my wool pieces!  Whoo Hoo!