Button Making Online Course

You might have noticed that I like making thread wrapped buttons. There are just a few of my attempts displayed on Passementerie Buttons tab at the top of the page. Well, exciting news! Gina-B Silkworks now has an online course in making thread buttons. I learned my button making skills through Gina's DVDs but now it is available to anyone regardless of where they live in the world. The DVDs actually led to Gina asking me to join her design team and my projects are on UK national television regularly. So you never know where those skills will take you.

Although the buttons look complicated - believe me, I thought it would be impossible to learn how to make them - but it is actually a straight forward process that can be taken to all kinds of heights once you learn the basics.

I don't want to do the hard sell. I'm not a sales person. I want people to be inspired by what I make rather then talking them into buying new stuff. However I am VERY excited about this. I love making buttons. It was one of those totally unexpected hobbies that I never thought I would take to with such enthusiasm. And the cost is very reasonable - just £17.99 (roughly $23.84 US according to the currency converter on 22nd June 2018). Take a look at Gina's web site to find out more information - and prepare to become obsessed!

Sale time

I really am useless at keeping the blog updated at the moment. Too much to do, too little time. I just wanted to mention that I am having a 15% sale in my Etsy store at the moment. The sale includes some art, hand painted pebbles and thread wrapped brooches. They are all ideal gifts for loved ones - and a little unusual too. Do pop by and have a look if you are interested.

Just a little show and tell

Not much to report on the creative side this week. There has been lots of bead making, of course. Other than that, just a couple of new samples using buttons. A notepad made using grey board as the backing which I covered in K&Co papers and a glass nightlight holder made using ribbons and a bit of bling.

 

A-tissue!

A little Christmas gift sewing this week. I found this nice little tutorial by Two Brown Birds for making tissue holders and wanted to give it a try. My first one (made in yellow and green and decorated with a hand made button and seed beads) came out rather nicely. So now my family will be getting tissue holders as part of their gifts this Christmas - and considering how often I make my sister cry with my choice of gift (in a good way, I promise) I think she might find this gift quite useful. I have been making more gifts for this year's festivities but I will put up photos of them later - I don't want to give too much away to those relatives who might be reading this.

Playing with shadows

Just a quick update today. A few weeks back Gina-B Silkworks sent me some new products to play with - including these Shadow Plaques. Needless to say, I love them! There are so many things you can do with these. They are meant for displaying passementerie buttons but you could use them for displaying  art, embroidery, little pieces that show new art or craft techniques. They can be made up into gifts or kept as a record of some creative endeavour.

Sadly my photographic skills here are awful. I was having problems with my camera at the time so I could only take a quick snapshot. But if you go to Gina-B Silkwork's page for the mini shadow plaques she has better photos of my samples under the main photo along with other samples by Gina and Chris.

Button-a-Day for January

This year Gina-B Silkworks is taking part in a button-a-day project. A whole year of buttons. Can you imagine it? Talk about focused. Unfortunately my focus does not extend to seeing twelve months ahead but I did like the idea of making a button every day. So I have been doing the Button-a-Day for January. Below are the photos of each of the buttons - a veritable rainbow. I even had to order some new threads because I was so 'inspired'. Now I just have to find projects to add the buttons to.

Buttons and threads

The last few weeks have been filled with Christmas commissions so not much crafting for me. I will be able to show most of the commissions after Christmas but in the meantime, here are some new buttons I have been making. I was practising using different colour combinations and even added a bit of sparkle here and there.

I used DMC threads for most of my buttons so I treated myself to an early Christmas present - DMC's thread colour card. It is brilliant. When shopping online for threads it can be qute difficult to find that ideal shade. Not now. I have samples of every perle and stranded cotton thread that DMC offer and can see exactly what colour it is. Hooray! It will make thread shopping much easier in future.

Sewing circles

I came across a couple of interesting tutorials online this week. Both involved sewn circles used in festive ways. So when I managed to get a few hours to myself I gave them a shot. Neither took long - a couple of hours each at most - and they fulfilled my desperate need to sew after a heavy week of bead making.

The first was a folded fabric ornament by Crouton Crakerjacks on YouTube. Really simple but a lovely finished product. Mine is decorated with some ganutell holly leaves from a new kit by Gina-B Silkworks.

I also made a couple of smaller ones and added a snowflake button to one and some beads and a tassel to the other.

The next one was a little fabric angel by Selimut-ku. It is so very cute and would make nice little gifts for anyone who loves angels. As you can see, my guy has his head tilted to the side giving him a curious look.

One other little Christmassy sewing project is the new start for the top of the family Christmas tree. The current star was made by my sister when she was at primary school and it's looking a bit dog eared. In fact it was made of straw and only has thee points left out of the original twelve. So I made a paper pieced, quilted star in yellow with a yellow hand made button in the centre.

Even more buttons

Just a few pictures of buttons that I have made this week. I am up to my ears in art commissions for Christmas so there is not much time for other crafting. However I do have some new sets from Gina-B Silkworks to make up though so photos will be coming soon.

A resurgence of buttons

I've been on a button kick recently thanks to a new kit from Gina-B Silkwork. It's a snowflake button kit. The buttons are so charming and I got very excited when I opened the package with them inside. Couldn't contain myself, in fact. I dashed off and wrapped a few buttons as soon as I could. If you take a look at the link you can see some of my samples in the second photo (yes, I forgot to photograph my samples before sending them off again).

After that there was no stopping me. I love making buttons - thread wrapped buttons in particular - and after treating myself to some new size 8 perle threads I was wrapping up a storm.

This button in particular is one of my favourites. It is a 'rottweiler' button that I made in memory of Stanley. It is black and tan with a star in the middle to represent what a star he was to me.

Cute little box

I picked some plain boxes up from the craft centre a few weeks ago. They are nice and chunky and open to so much creativity. This is the first of the ones I have decorated. Wrapped in paper, touched up with ink, a couple of decorative buttons and a tiny tassel on a cord.

Buttons and beads

I've been re-inspired by buttons this week. Back in 2011 I first got into making thread wrapped buttons and use them often in many of my crafts. This week I bought a bunch of perle cotton thread in size 8. They are fabulous for wrapping buttons - fine and silky, they give a lovely finish. I even made some Scottish saltire buttons.

I also bought a lovely little downloadable tutorial for quilted beads from Victoria Gertenbach earlier this year and have been making up a few beads. Although she uses quilting fabric and batting to make her beads I have made most of mine using wool felt. They are so simple to make using offcuts of fabric, you can decorate them in numerous ways and use them in all kinds of craft. You can never have too many beads. But then I'm a beadaholic and I would say that.

Creatiframe samples

The beauty of working for Gina B Silkworks as part of the design team is that I get to work with quality products that make my imagination run riot. Gina has recently released some great new products that mean I can try out different techniques - from weaving to embroidery, from rug making to needle lace, from macramé to... OK, OK, you get the idea. Lots of different crafts. Yay!

The basis of these new craft kits is a product called Creatiframe, a wooden frame with slots or holes to allow you to try new techniques and then display your hard work. There is also a range of accessories which allows you to display your work in a functional way. Brilliant! I don't want to come off like this is a sales pitch. The purpose of this post is to show you photos of what I've been up to. However it is a really ingenious idea. How many times do you try a new craft and then it just sits around in a box or gathering dust on a shelf?

Anyway, on to my creative efforts:

The first photo is of the mobile phone/tablet/e-reader holder - which works great with my Kindle.

Next is a steampunk ATC box for storing your ATCs. Gina also sells ATC size Creatiframes which you can work up and then trade - or just hoard in the box.

The following photos are of various sizes of the frames (they also come in rectangular shape). The bright yellow one uses a mish-mash of techniques from Teneriffe lace techniques, beading, wire wrapping and a hand made button.

The pink weaving is done using flat bamboo yarn that really catches the light - although not very well in this photo. Of course, I had to add more buttons.

Finally, some embroidered pieces (the two on the left) and one wrapped with silk thread and an acrylic square suspended from it

These are just a tiny proportion of the samples i have made. I just can't help myself. There are so many different styles that they can be used with all kinds of crafts. I've even used one to frame a little painting. To see more of my samples check out my very own design team member gallery page.

Bangles and Beads (and other stuff)

Just a quick post with a few pictures of my recent samples for Gina-B Silkworks today.

 First up is a bracelet made using gold memory wire, a beaded cartwheel button (made using instruction from Gina's Making Even More Buttons DVD) and some paper beads made using Gina's Paper Bead Stencil Kit. I started out by using one strand of memory wire but felt it was too thin compared to the size of the button (see the picture below for the 'before' bracelet). So I added a second strand and used a soutache braiding technique to fasten the two strands together. Chunkier and more substantial.

 

Next is a coin purse that I came across. A lot of the things I make are targeted at women. However when I saw this purse I thought that it could make quite a nice masculine gift with the addition of a button. Worked in yellow, greens and cream, I think it adds a little bit of originality without being sparse.

 

And on the subject of the feminine objects I make, here are a couple of tins/jars that I have decorated using Teneriffe lace that I made using a Teneriffe lace kit . I had never made Teneriffe lace until I tried the kits but it makes some fabulous roundels that can be used on all kinds of crafts.