Happy National Button Week -- and a wonderful giveaway from Nina Edwards!

 ~*~*~This post will stay on top of the blog through March 18; please scroll down for other, newer posts, too!~*~*~

Nina Edwards, author of On the Button, is here to help us celebrate National Button Week, March 11-18, with a contest for all of us, on her own blog!  Read on:

Hello there, Button Floozies! I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when I found your site. I was in the middle of writing a cultural history of the button, and battling with the ins and outs of industrial production at the time. (How was a threefold made? What was meant by églomisé?) 

Here were like-minded people who delighted in the beauty of even the most ordinary buttons. Who noticed how they could recall the past. Buttons rich in romance, sexy as hell, tenderly sad or sometimes just mad, bad and evidence of brutality.

The first time I really noticed buttons was astride my grandfather’s knee. He was the carthorse - clip-clop, clip-clop - and I was the laughing farmer. My grandfather would pretend to stumble in a ditch, be bitten by a passing wasp, be startled by a lorry, and lurch about extravagantly, so that I would have to grab hold of my misbehaving steed. All I could reach were the buttons on his tweed jacket - large brown buttons they were, just right for a small fist. Like the magic buttons on the ebony horse of the Arabian Nights, I rode on, fearlessly.  These plain buttons are in my button tin today.

What stories occur to you? Why do you love buttons? How do buttons work their magic? There are 3 copies of On the Button for the most evocative and unusual or just plain funny stories, which – if you email them to me/my publisher at tabbs@ibtauris.com – will all be posted on my blog: buttonsandoffal.

(‘Offal’? … but that’s another story)

Vintage Buttons

I am not an expert on vintage buttons, I just love them :)

 Aren't these colors great?

Let's have a Spring Needlebook Swap!

Spring is in the air!  And that means it's almost National Button Week!  Yes, in the USA, National Button Week is next week, March 11-18, 2012, and we will have a nice giveaway here on the the Button Floozies blog so be sure to check back in a few days to hear about that!  In the meantime, let's start celebrating early with a swap!

 If you sew at all -- even just to replace a button on a blouse -- you need a little needlebook to hold your sharps.

If you sew a lot, as many of us do, then you know how handy it is to have a little take-along needlebook in each of your purses and several drawers of the house!

Needlebooks on Pinterest

I made a board on Pinterest for needlebooks (feel free to follow it if you have a Pinterest account -- and my button board, too!)  Some of the needlebooks I found and pinned are from blogs that also posted a tutorial on how to make them!  How easy is that?

Needlebooks on Pinterest

Of course, since this is Button Floozies, our needlebooks will have to be button adorned!  But that is the only rule for this swap -- create any kind of handmade needlebook you like, as long as it includes at least 5 buttons in its design!

Needlebooks on Pinterest

This will be a one-to-one swap; you will make one needlebook and receive one needlebook.  This time, though, you will not have a partner to exchange with; instead, you will send your book to one person and someone different will send you yours.  Here's how to join the swap:

1. Email me at buttonfloozies@gmail.com by Friday, March 23, 2012, with the following information: your name, your mailing address, your blog address if you have one, and whether or not you would be willing to swap internationally.
2. Comment here to let me know you're sending me an email to join.  I will respond promptly.  If you don't hear back from me, I didn't get your email!  It never fails that a few emails go missing, and I have given up trying to find out why.  But, I want everyone to be able to participate!
3. Upload the swap button to your blog and tell all your friends about the swap!  The more, the merrier!
4. You can get started making your needlebook creation as soon as you sign up!  I will email you the name and address of who you need to mail your book to by Monday, March 26, 2011.
5. Complete your needlebook, photograph it, and get it in the mail to your partner on or before Saturday, April 14, 2012.
6. After you hear from your swap partner that they've received it, visit the Flickr site I've created, Button Floozies Swap, and upload the photos you took of your swap so we can all see!

Greetings fellow Button Floozies, thank you all for your lovely comments about Buttons by McAnaraks and congratulations to Andrea Creates the winner of the 900 blog followers giveaway.

For the rest of this month, until March 31 2012 we will give a 20% discount to anyone who claims "I am a Button Floozie" when they order from our website www.mcanaraks.com

or our Etsy shop www.etsy.com/shop/ButtonsByMcAnaraks

We will give you a refund by Paypal after purchase.The 20% discount applies to the cost of the buttons, but not the postage costs.

If you would like to find out about future giveaways, special offers and news about Buttons by McAnaraks please visit our Facebook page and "like" us

http://www.facebook.com/ButtonsbyMcAnaraks

Happy buttoning, Floozies!

Fran from Buttons by McAnaraks

900 Followers Giveaway winner!

Fran used random.org to choose the lucky recipient of her beautiful buttons!

Congratulations to Andrea Creates!  Andrea, please email me with your address so I can mail these buttons out to you!  Mail to buttonfloozies (at) gmail (dot) com.

Thank you again to Button Floozie Fran for providing this wonderful giveaway!

Buttons by McAnaraks: Celebrating 900 followers with a giveaway!

***This post is staying at the top of the blog through March 5; please scroll down to see more, newer blog posts!***

My name is Fran and I make buttons.

I started out 20 odd years ago making clothes under my clothing label "McAnaraks" and selling them at craft fairs around Scotland. Steve invents and makes wooden puzzles and resin dice. We met at a craft fair when I asked him if he could make buttons for me to put on my jackets. He said he couldn't. I managed to overcome my disappointment and we got to know each other anyway and we have been together for 19 years now. So it was buttons that brought us together.

Eventually he started making buttons for me to put on the jackets I made. People often asked if they could buy them, but I jealously guarded them for use on my clothing creations. In 2009 I decided to have a go at decorating the buttons, and found that it was great fun and I was quite good at it, so we tried putting a few on sale at one of our craft fairs, they were a hit and "Buttons by McAnaraks" was born. 

The buttons are made from polyester resin which is a liquid plastic that hardens when combined with a catalyst. After the two are combined you have about 20 minutes to pour it into molds before it starts setting. This is a very messy and smelly process which requires the use of breathing apparatus and lots and lots of disposable rubber gloves - so I let Steve do all that side of it out in the garden shed. I stay in the warmth of our indoor workshop and do the arty bits - I decorate the buttons, each one freehand, which makes them all different. The process I use for this is a trade secret. I could tell you how I do it, but then I'm afraid I would have to kill you.

We have to leave the buttons to set overnight before emptying the molds, and I still find this bit exciting even after doing it hundreds of times. I never quite know what I'm going to find.

After a week the buttons are ready to be have their back edges ground, buffed and polished. We then mount them on cards and they are ready to send out to the shops that stock them or to our website and Etsy customers. 

Steve and I still make the things we started out making, but the buttons have become the thing that we spend most time on. It is exciting to have a new product and even more so because it is a joint venture. I think that all of us Button Floozies understand the attraction of a nice button, and I feel very lucky that I spend my time creating them.

 You can see our buttons and find out more about them on our website www.mcanaraks.com.

We also have an Etsy shop www.etsy.com/shop/ButtonsByMcAnaraks

and we are now on Facebook so please join us if you want to keep up with our news and find out about special offers in the future

http://www.facebook.com/ButtonsbyMcAnaraks.

Fran is generously offering this beautiful collection of buttons -- all that you see in these photos -- in celebration of Button Floozies reaching 900 followers!

Thank you so much for your generous giveaway, Fran!

To win these buttons, please comment on this post only between now and March 5, 2012.

One comment per person, please; if your email address is more than one click away on your blog profile, please include it in your comment. 

This giveaway ends on March 5, 2012, 11:59 pm MST; I will choose one comment by random number generator on the morning of March 6, 2012, and that lucky commenter will get all these beautiful, handmade buttons!

Please note: the chosen commenter will have 48 hours to respond to my email/announcement that they have been chosen; if I don't hear from them within 48 hours I will choose an alternate winner.

Has Anyone Posted this Article?

This article is from Piecework Magazine and I thought you might enjoy reading it if you have not already seen it.

gratuitous button shots

I wrote a post on my blog yesterday

well i say that but really i just posted

a whole bunch of gratuitous button shots!

like this one

want to see more ;)

click the link

http://maximumrabbitdesigns.blogspot.com/2012/02/gratuitous-button-shots.html

kind regards

x vInTaGe VioLeT x

Grandma's Button Tin

I remember as a child I loved to play with the contents of my Grandma's button tin, I loved the shapes and textures. My favourites were the mother of pearl buttons that would glisten in the sunlight. The glass ones were invariable chipped or shattered and I often wondered why she kept the broken cracked ones. I still have my Grandma's mother of pearl buttons, but my mother's button tin is full of bland modern plastic types and my daughter isn't remotely interested in my mother's buttons. She is a product of the throw away society we have become today unlike yester-year when all the buttons were routinely cut off old clothes and put in the rusty old family button tin, clothes are neatly folded and placed in one of the many charity bags that are put through our letterboxes seeming every other week!

Now if your Grandma had a very large button tin like mine did there would be other treasures and many odd things to be found in there. You would get the usual things such as pins, needles, thimbles, old sewing machine parts and the lovely colourful Bakelite buckles. Grandma's silver sixpence still with silver foil attached was in there, a momento of Xmas past, but my favourite item in the tin was a silver marcasite ring which after her death was given to me, and which I have treasured ever since.

I have collected vintage sewing items for many years and mother of pearl buttons in particular are my favourite item possibly a throwback to my youth! You find some very strange items in button tins and I often wonder why people would put such items in their button tins. Items such as badges, cuff links, beads, screw drivers, pen nibs, dog tags, keys, wax, bone & metal curtain rings, marbles, meccano, and loose matches all probably put there because it was convenient to do so. The oddest and potentionally dangerous thing I have found in a tin were loose pain-killers!, which believe it or not are quite a common thing to find in an old button tins, the mind boggles!

Start you button collection today - visit my store Henrietta's buttons store   I cater for the collector, design student, vintage clothes restorer, and crafts people so come along and browse through my buttons section you never know what you might find.

On the Button,The Significance of An Ordinary Item

British author Nina Edwards has written a book I know you will want to get: On the Button, the Significance of an Ordinary Item.

In it, Edwards explores the humble button and its cultural history, from its place in fashion to its use in the arts.  She also looks at us -- button lovers -- and why we enjoy and collect them.

With photos, button history, and descriptions, the book celebrates everything we enjoy about our favorite little fasteners!

Best of all, in my book, is the mention this blog gets in the introduction!  A must-have for Floozies, for sure!

Button Floozies in the news

My Colorado Springs Button Club made the news, from yesterday's meeting!  Button collecting is serious business for this club.

Photo by Mark Reis, The Gazette

(That's me, at 2 o'clock, dark hair, black sweater!)

Happy Valentine's Day... Belated

Happy Belated Valentine's Day to you!

I mounted a few common heart buttons as a 

Valentine's Day display...

 I am always looking for heart buttons with "I LOVE YOU" on them, any language including Rebus.  I only have seven "I LOVE YOU" buttons, so please contact me if you come across different styles... Thanks!

(Tami Hacker, vintageconnections.blogspot.com)

Could these be old button covers?

Calling all floozies!  I was wondering if you could look at these treasures I found and see if  the first picture might be button covers.  I am also including some cool buttons I found in a jar at the flea market for 10.00.  Yay I made a good purchase I am thinking!  If anyone could help me id the others I would be so happy! Thank you.

Vintage Button Card ATC

This buton card was the perfect size for an ATC.  I added all the things I love to collect and many things that remind me of my mom's sewing room.  This was swapped all the way to London!

It's funny...

When you're looking through pinterest, and find one of your handmade originals in someone's folder!I've been making and selling these for years, but I kept this particular one for myself!

Happy Valentine's Day!

The buttoned heart ornament above was among the beauties from the Valentine Swap I hostessed on my blog.  Click here and here to see all 20 of the valentine beauties by my talented crafty friends in Blogland!

Happy Valentine's Day, Button Floozies!

Bluebird of Happiness & Button Painting Tutorial

Spring is coming soon and I've been busy painting bluebirds (and birds of all colors) on my antique MOP buttons which I sell on my etsy shop...  Also I want to remind everyone I have a detailed tutorial on my blog on button painting.  It covers every step from the preparation to the finishing spray... and also covers supplies needed. If you are interested in painting on buttons check it out...  It's great fun...
http://olderrose.blogspot.com/p/button-painting-tutorial.html

Gerry Krueger
http://olderrose.blogspot.com/
http://www.etsy.com/shop/olderrose

Here's My Heart...

I know you're all getting your Valentines together to share with your own sweethearts, but in the event you need one more gift idea, I'd like to share mine with you.

I love sorting through my vintage buttons to create a button heart for someone special. I've made quite a few of them and while they're simple to make, the effect is quite elegant.

All you need is a 5" x 7" shadow box frame, a large supply of buttons (I like to do all of my hearts in a monochromatic scheme, so I choose buttons from the same color family for each heart), and a hot glue gun. If you're all thumbs like I am, you can use a low-melt gun instead.

I take a heart-shaped template and place it on the velvet background of the frame and outline it with a light colored pencil to make the heart image that I'll use as my guide for placement of the buttons. Be sure to leave enough room around the heart so that you can put your piece back into the frame.

Then, using larger buttons as the base layer (I usually used newer buttons on the center because you won't see them anyway), begin building your heart. You'll notice that I manage to find at least one button with a point - either a triangular or square button - for the point of the heart.

I find this project always relaxes me and it's great fun to make your button heart. Have fun and Happy Valentine's Day!

You're invited to stop over and visit me from time to time at Brynwood Needleworks. I'm always creating something, and I'd love to share more ideas with you! (I'm having a 1000th Post Giveaway that ends Valentine's Day, too!)

Button Decorating idea...

Here is a fun way to use buttons in your home decor... plus storing them as well!blogged about here: Artsy Fartsy

Tape Measure Bracelet with Buttons

I have seen and admired these tape measure bracelets for a couple of years now and finally figured out a way to make one without the toggle findings.

I used black elastic cording I had laying around and tied it in a square knot, it is hidden in the fold over of the end of the tape measure. I sewed the end and measured around my wrist, left an inch or so and cut it off. then folded and sewed down the other end. I'm sure you could glue down the ends and use a small ponytail elastic band if you wanted to.

I then went to my button stash and found 3 that went together and sewed them on and added some glue too.

Sew Simple!

Button Floozie, Deb