Vintage Wednesday: Vintage Buttons

Since I talked a little about buttons yesterday, let me tell you a little more about them. Buttons have become a hot commodity - especially if they're highly decorative. Some buttons have historical significance, such as Civil War buttons. Others are created as specialty items by artists - JHB, a larger button company, is even offering button molds for the enterprising artist.

If you're interested in collecting buttons, there's a National Button Society to be joined. In that case, you should also look for a copy of "The Big Book of Buttons" by Elizabeth Hughes, which is considered THE reference book for button collectors and comes with a big price if you can find one today. Or, you can do what I do: collect what you love.

Though metal buttons are highly collectible, I'm not such a fan. I prefer glass - especially Czech glass with their iridescent or gilded swirls and flowers. I'm also a fan of paperweight buttons - tiny designs suspended in glass. And who doesn't love a carved mother of pearl button with their quiet dignity and grace?

If you've not yet discovered a love of buttons, pull out your mother's button stash (most mothers or grandmothers have one) and poke around. You might be surprised!

Working Tuesday: Button, button, who's got the button?

As I've said before, I have a life long love affair with old buttons. The colors and textures and designs all come together in so many ways to create endless combinations and permutations of a little item that keeps our clothes in place.

For years I've had a collection of buttons. Some are plan - it's easy to find the plain ones - but some are a little more special. I'll pick through 100 brown coat buttons to find one colored glass button. I'll also pick through 100 white buttons to find a tiny baby button made of mother of pearl. I look at it as a treasure hunt.

Because of this fascination, I've found a way to combine two loves - collecting buttons and making jewelry - in the button pendants I do. The problem, however, often becomes finding a large button that will showcase the smaller, more intricate buttons in a pendant. I was lucky enough to find a blue Mason jar full of mainly large buttons. And so I sit. Sorting. Dreaming. Designing in my button heaven.

Inspiration Thursday! Imogen Heap.

In my many, many years of schooling I found the best way to get myself to concentrate was to put on some music. Quite honestly, if I didn't have that music going in my head, I'd be distracted by the many other things I could be doing instead of say, writing a paper or reading that last 300 pages or whatever. I'd procrastinate like crazy. I'd even ~gasp~ clean the house to keep from sitting down to get the studying done. Music definitely provided the distraction that became the focus.

It seems the more complex the subject, the more complex the music needed to be. Just as most art has many layers, so does music. And the best music will inspire art. I suppose that's also true vice versa!

In recent years, the artist I tend to go to for inspiration is Imogen Heap. She layers her music like an watercolor artist layers color. Sometimes it's delicate, wispy even. Other times it's slapstick fun. Sometimes it has a biblical reference complete with samples of locusts. Other times it reminds us of a cause. And there are not many of her pieces I would not listen to every day of the week over and over again. She just doesn't get old for me.

Her newest CD starts with First Train Home, which she says is about being at a party but wanting to be home:

Temporal deadzone where clocks are barely breathing, Yet no one cares to notice for all the yelling, All night clamor to hold it together. I want to play - don't wait - forms in the hideaway. I want to get on with getting on with things. I want to run in fields, paint the kitchen, love someone. And I can't do any of that here, can I?

Her words paint pictures in my mind - what creativity to describe clocks as barely breathing! What about Hide and Seek's, the dust has only just begun to form crop circles in the carpet? Glittering Cloud gives locusts who are about to obliterate more vegetation a voice of reason: Save me, oh save me, save me from myself, Before I hurt somebody else again. And The Walk comes to mind many times in my life (usually when shopping): I feel a weakness coming on.

In recent days, I've been thinking about the "Upcycled Movement" and how we use things others discard to create art. "Immi" has an interesting take on our treatment of this Earth - and it's from the point of view of a mother:

The cold shoulder, folded arms, the looking up. You've never listened and carry on, careless, regardless. This is not a fire drill and if we hold any hope, It's harmonic connection, in stereo symbiosis. These Legoland empires choking out mine, Now you're everywhere, everywhere multiplying around me child. A strain on my heart, This rock can't tolerate anymore. Stop this right away. Put that down and clean this mess up. End of conversation. Put your back in it and make it up to me now.

This really does remind me we've got to be stewards of the resources we've been given and need to be careful to clean up our messes - and I mean that in a purely NON-political way. I love seeing artists who are taking that concept and making art with that in mind. The other day I saw an Anthropologie store window decorated with cut up, spray painted 2-liter bottles that had been shaped into flowers and strung together with old bicycle wheels. From far away, it looked like flowers. Up close, you could see the bottles. How clever!

For me, it's taking buttons that have been pulled off of clothing for generations and making them into wearable art. It's finding the textures and designs that will create a new whole. It's finding colors that are striking and appealing. And I love it. But I digress....


Inspiration can be found in many ways. Music is a wonderful way to find inspiration. Imogen Heap is an amazing artist who often inspires me. And let's face it, who doesn't love someone with the chutzpah to show up at the Grammys with a lily pad and Gary the Grammy Frog? Oh yeah, she's THAT girl!

Buttons... buttons... buttons....

To say I've had a life long love of buttons probably doesn't exactly convey the crazy little welling of joy when I "find" a new stash of these little jewels. I think anyone who loves buttons understands what I mean. It's somewhat irrational the temptation to take each find home, add it to your special button pile that's kept for only the best of projects. And forget looking on ebay. That's just asking money to pour from your pockets in waves... at least that's true for me.

The first place I remember treasure hunting is in my Mama's button box - the button box that was added to her mother's button box, that was added to her mother's button box, and on, and on. I come from a long line of button hoarders. I remember there being smaller boxes and prescription bottles where an attempt at sorting had taken place. Pearl buttons were with pearl buttons, six of the same button strung together with string and baby buttons gathered in a Sucrets tin. I'd pick through them and pull out the ones I liked best, sorting as I went (I'm more than a little OCD, I admit it).

Then there are specific instances I remember being with Mama and finding buttons that demanded a special outfit, or an outfit that demanded special buttons. One such sighting was in Asheville, NC in a yarn shop. They had these amazing pewter buttons with thistles that were something like $8 each. My high school budget certainly couldn't afford such an outrageous sum, and even begging garnered only 3 of these precious thistles that later found a home on one of Mama's creations. Then there were the special trips to G-Street Fabrics in Rockville, MD with their rows of shelves of buttons that completed more than one of my formal gowns and countless jackets.

These days I haunt estate sales and flea markets hoping to find that box of a lifetime - the one with the carved pearl, the czech glass, the painted glass, faceted jet - buttons that go beyond the brown and black of most button boxes. And after years of searching I remember only three sales that really blew me away. The best was the flea market in Fairmont, WV where I found two large boxes of buttons, one white, one multi-colored, sitting under a table offered for $10 for the lot. I snapped those up!

I'm often left relying on the kindness of strangers. I had a former co-worker who cleaned out her mother's house after her death who remembered I was "crafty" and offered me the leftovers of a lifetime of sewing. That gift included not only buttons, but yarns and notions and books on pattern drafting - all welcome additions to my collection.

Most recently, my mother-in-law heard that I was again collecting buttons to use in my jewelry design. I had finally found a way to incorporate my love of buttons into my need to create. She unearthed her golden tin of buttons collected as a child with HER grandmother by going to the local salvage yard and pulling buttons from discarded clothing.

So how about you? Do you keep your buttons in their original boxes? Are yours sorted in old prescription bottles? Did some of your collection come from your mother or grandmother? Did you string them when you were young? Do you design outfits around the most special of your collection?

Am I alone in my love of buttons? I doubt I am.

Babies, babies, babies

It's interesting how as you get older you go through "crops" of babies. First, your high school friends have a crop. Then, your college friends have a crop. Then, your out of college friends have a crop. Eventually you move to a new church or social group and, you guessed it, they have a crop.

I think we've been through 10 new babies in the past year and we've still got 3-4 on the way. One is a new nephew. Another - a boy too - for one of my best friends. The closest, however, is a little girl for a friend who was married a couple months before we were.

After months of searching for just the perfect gift, my Mom sent me a couple baby shoe patterns I thought I would try. And I'm hooked.

My first foray was for the little girl. How much fun is it to walk around the fabric store scoping out girly fabrics for little tiny shoes?? I admit, I went a little overboard. I now have enough fabric to shoe every baby born among my friends and family for about the next 10 years. But OH was it fun!

The girly ones were the first I tried - both plain and bunny with flowers. Tiny button noses! Tiny flower closures! The pair for the boy were the next. I used bunny fabric for the insides of those and hand stitched the sides for a more handmade look. Little bunny faces peek out from inside the soles!

I'm learning more with each pair I do. And enjoying every minute.