Framed Buttons

Hi Everyone!

My grandmother, Nana Riley, had a black floral tin that was filled with buttons. I loved to feel their smoothness as I ran my fingers through them. I played with them and sorted them over and over again.

When she moved from Wren Street to an apartment on Spring Street Nana gave my mother the buttons. When I became a teacher my mother gave them to me. I kept them in my math learning center and my students played with them and sorted them as I had many years before.

One year while I was teaching at the Hastings School in Lexington my students were especially fascinated with the buttons. One day on their own they glued a sequence of buttons from smallest to largest to a strip of posterboard. Each day some of them would arrive with buttons hoping to have found one that was smaller or larger than the smallest and largest ones on the posterboard. If they found one that worked they added it to the posterboard.

One day a little boy named Jimmy arrived with a very tiny pink button. It was the tiniest button any of us had ever seen and was most definitely smaller than any button on the posterboard. Jimmy proudly added the button to our collection. It turned out that Jimmy had snipped the button off of his newborn baby sister's sweater!

One year a student's grandmother worked in the Women's department at Lord and Taylor's. She gave us tiny packages of beautiful buttons that were the extras that are often attached to clothing and fall to the floor when someone tries on the clothing.

Now that I am no longer in the classroom I use my buttons to embellish cards, wreaths, gift bags and more. I have them sorted by color and store them in pint and quart canning jars.

The newest special issue from PaperCrafts magazine is called 350 Cards & Gifts. There's a framed button shadow box by Jessica Witty featured on the cover. It's also on page 131. The minute I saw it I knew I wanted to create one to hang in my crafting corner.
 
I had a frame in my closet that is similar to Jessica's, but it's not a shadow box. I removed the glass from it and added some buttons to the center of it. I LOVE it.
 

 
Now I have to rearrange things just slightly on the walls in my own little corner so that it can be hung above my rubber stamps.
 
I have 2 workshops again today so I am heading out the door. 
Hope you have a great day!
Carol