Do you know Catweazle? I have a Catweazle button that had been in one of my glass cabinets for years and years. You know those button badges with a message, a favorite singer, a cartoon character or even your own photo (there used to be a stand making those at the beer tent during our annual town fest).
I still remember I had to have Catweazle, I was always a fan. In fact it's the only button like this that I have ever seen, maybe the seller made it himself.
As a teenager I loved those buttons, I always wore one of Snoopy and alternated others on my denim jacket.
Eventually I didn't find a jacket that I liked anymore or I liked them and they didn't fit, and eventually I lost my buttons. Except two, Snoopy and Catweazle (although Snoopy is hiding, in a drawer probably).
I blame my friend and fellow JAC member Carole for what comes next. Why is it Carole's fault that I had to turn our old English sorcerer into a piece of jewelry, though?
She shared a button press which reminded me of Catweazle (and Snoopy). I knew exactly where he was (now that's a new one, a safe place that I remember!), and I thought I'd experiment a little and do some bead embroidering. The experimenting part was that I wanted to use the original pin in the back. So I had to cut a hole in the center of my "Stiff Stuff" which didn't leave much surface for the glueing.
Glue story #1,478,575. I'm running low on glue ... do you know what happens if you you do? You squeeze a little harder and watch the opening at the same time. Nothing comes out, so you squeeze a little harder in case it has dried up a bit. That's the moment when it shoots out and you get it all over the button, your hands, and your t-shirt. So you clean up everything - which sounds much less time consuming than it was - glue the button on and hope for the best.
Except for the firepolished crystals my choice of beads was rather random, I used the colors that I had in a bead cup from when I ripped up a bead scarf recently.
I bet Catweazle never thought he could get that sparkly!
Now came the difficult part, cutting a hole into the center of the Ultrasuede. My plan was to make it a little smaller and then make cuts all around, so I could fold the Ultrasuede into the rim of the button's back ... and glue it. When will I ever learn?
It's by no means perfect, but maybe it will be better the next time. Maybe I'll get myself some scissors that work better for this or maybe I use Ultrasuede in a color that actually let's me see see the line I'm supposed to follow. I would have liked to make the back nicer, but at least it's functional.
Which challenge is next? ;-)
I have never liked buttons. I tolerate them, but if possible I avoid them. Okay, that's not completely true. I never liked buttons on my clothes. There are beautiful vintage buttons, but the ones that I liked when browsing were always too expensive for me to just have them disappear in my supply drawers.
So when I read that the topic for a challenge in May was "use button/s", I declared right away that I was out. I'm a zipper girl. Sorry, guys. Not a button to use around here and I didn't feel like going shopping for one button.
May went by and still no button had crossed my path. June came and I didn't think about it anymore as the challenge was over, anyway (although we are quite cool about deadlines, we all have been late one or the other time). Until yesterday, that is.
I was playing around with my Little BigShot lens and randomly grabbed tourmaline beads from the shell next to my light tent which also holds some Swiss coins. I have not the slightest idea where they came from. I have even less an idea about the thing I picked up next. In fact I don't even know why I picked it up.
It was a button, and I stared at it as if I had never seen a button before in my life.
It was made to look like an old Austrian coin, 20 Kreuzer from 1826, and showed the double-headed eagle with "GAL.LOD.IL.REX.A.A. 1826" on one and "HVN.BOH.LOMB.ET.VEN." on the other
side of it.
That means Hungariae,
Bohemiae, Lombardiae et Venetiae, Galiciae, Lodomeriae, Ilyriae, Rex
A.A. = King of Hungary, Bohemia, Lombardy and Venice, Galicia,
Lodomeria, Illyria, Archduke of Austria.
Some of that I knew by myself, but I had to google for the other ones (Lodomeria? - never heard that before).
This is not a treasure, but it was an interesting find nevertheless and again - where did it come from in the first place?? It's a pity I couldn't find out when this was produced, so instead of obsessing over its past, I started thinking about its future.
I held different wire colors against it and decided to use a dark copper tone for a wire crochet bezel. Tiny orange carnelian beads for a bit of color. And last but not least a bronze tone ball chain to pick up the brassy color of the button.
Voilà!
Cubes. Tiny cubes. I remember when I first discovered them and just had to get different colors. It's not as if I didn't use any of them, mind you. I loomed with them (even if that is still in the WIP drawer due to my weak Peyote skills, but that's a different story) and I knitted with them. Then things calmed down in the cube section of the drawer.
That's over now. I dragged all of them into the light of day and started making cube soups. I loomed a bracelet for myself. And I got back to a design of mine that I love.
To close a bracelet is not always easy for everyone. You should think I'm used to doing it, but there have been times - particularly mornings - when even I have given up because it was obviously not the day for a bracelet with a clasp. That's when I decided on making bracelets with button holes and beads for buttons, mostly lampwork beads and one agate bead.
This bracelet is by far the widest one. The mix of light and darker blue cubes sparkles beautifully. As I couldn't find my silver colored wire, I went for midnight blue. It was probably fate, the dark blue was the perfect contrast for the cube soup.
And as luck would have it, I found an orphaned blue lampwork bead in my stash, too. I'm afraid I can't say which artist made it. Even if I have an idea, I can't be sure, so I better don't name anyone at all.
I'm really happy with how the piece turned out and the temptation to use the other cubes in bracelets as well is big, but who knows, there might be a different idea just around the corner, so I won't give in to the temptation.
If you want to see more pictures and more detail, you can find them in the listing of my Zibbet shop.
