Button Love

I just love the button trees that have been so outrageously popular lately. Quite a few have been posted at peas, like:

--this yummy pink creation from Jennifer Stewart

--this one from another pea "blondie 11721"

--this one from Gretchen Owens is really beautiful

--and this one from another Sarah (she said it took 8 hours...mine didn't take nearly that long.)

--and this one from Tia Bennett - if you want instructions (very detailed instructions) go to this one

--and yeah, if you wanna see more...google "button tree". There a tons.

Since I missed doing one for Christmas, I thought it would be cool to do a Valentines one. At least, that was the original plan but I'm pretty sure it's going to stay around for many moons. I really like it. I was thinking that by pulling out some of the darker reds and putting in some pale greens and pale blues, it could easily become an Easter button tree!

So far, I've pinned 200 buttons and yes, as one might guess, it's a little tedious, so I enlisted Julian's help. I held the buttons on and he crammed in the pins. At one point, I selected a white button and he said "Mom, you need a dark pink there." ((snort)) Crafty boy.

I found the grab bag of Bubblegum buttons (isn't that an appropriate name?) at http://www.morebuttons.com/ (very affordable). One bag will be plenty...with leftovers. My tree, which is on a 9" cone form ($3.69) isn't quite complete yet because I ran out of pins. I used pearl-head pins from Michaels (100 pins for $2.49) and so far I have used 2 packs. I think it will probably take at least 1.5 more packs of pins to finish. I think Walmart carries less expensive pins. I noticed that some people used the pins with smaller heads but I couldn't find those at Micheals so I went with the larger ones. I bet the smaller ones are less expensive.

I used a white form because I didn't want to paint it. White styro has a slight glitter to it that adds a nice touch--not that much of the cone is showing. :)

If I were super indulgent, I would have covered the cone in a pretty pink satin ribbon and spaced the buttons out a little more.

Happy Buttoning!