Sunday 16 September 2012

Art with buttons!

This is a quick post, but I couldn't help it. I saw this very cute picture for sale on an Etsy shop for U$ 65 (about £40). I just could not believe it. It is soooooo simple to make and it wouldn't cost you even a 1/4 of that!

Art with buttons!
Baby girl monogram by Letter Perfect Designs

Buy a plain blank canvas from any arts & crafts shop or at Amazon. Prices will vary from £2 to £3 depending on the size. The one in the picture is 25cm x 25cm (10'' x 10''), but you can make it smaller or bigger as you wish. I like the mini ones (10cm x 10cm) very much!

Choose the buttons you want to use. I recently bought in Hornscastle a bunch for £1 that would be more than enough to make this. They often come in different tones of your chosen colour. Ebay is the place to get some fairly cheap ones. 

For the fabric, this one uses grey silk. If your frame is roughly the same size as this one, a one metre cut should be more than enough. I checked on Ebay as well and if you're lucky you can find a good piece for about £5 to £7. But it doesn't mean that you necessarily need to use silk. I particularly like to work with natural cotton or a medium weight fabric. 

The rest is pretty straight forward, isn't it? Place your canvas over the fabric like if you would wrap it. Mark and cut the excess remembering to leave enough to fold inwards so you have a nice finish.

With the fabric still placec over your canvas, play around with the buttons to design your letter. You will need patience now to sew each button, but what arts & crafts project doesn't require that? :)

Once you're done with the sewing, time to stick your fabric to the canvas. To help you with the folding, use some drawing pins (have a look at how they did it on right side). Depending on how thick is the side of your canvas, I advise you to twist the point of the pins and maybe stick some tape over it, so there is no chance someone handling the frame will hurt themselves.

To finish, use some fabric/textile glue to stick the fabric inwards covering both the wood and the taped pin edges. If you're aiming for the exact same look, add some cute ribbon to the top to help you hanging the frame.

I can't see anyone spending more than £15 to make it. To be honest, if you already have things lying around at home, like assorted buttons, fabric glue, drawing pins, ribbons and spare cuts of fabric, it will cost you a lot less.

Oh my, this was meant to be a quick post and it is now 2am! I got carried away again...

Art with buttons!
Another Letter Perfect Design monogram, this one is 8'' x 10''


1 comment:

  1. great idea... you can spray paint the buttons all one color and then glue the buttons onto the fabric, much easier than sewing and it would look nice in a frame with the frame and buttons black. I have seen it done like that.

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