Buttons! Round 1

While browsing wedding websites I came across the idea of button bouquets. Buttons! How exciting. My appointment with the florist was not exciting and I feel like nothing concrete was achieved. She said it went well, but I was not impressed. But buttons! I could work on this now and be done. My bouquet could be bright and colorful. Every time I looked at these button bouquets and the button boutonnieres, I smiled. And Aaron thought it was awesome too.

I became consumed with buttons. I scanned all 30 pages of button bouquets on Etsy while pretending to listen to statistics, I browsed internet stores for button ideas, searched Ebay auctions, looked on Craigslist, tried the junk stores and Goodwills, and went to all the crafty stores in my area, and sent others to look too. I borrowed my Mom's button box and a huge button jar from a friend (Thank you Pat!).

This is what I learned. 1. Buttons are actually expensive. 2. Interesting buttons are even more expensive. 3. Button mixes where buttons are all sort of random and different are way more exciting - thus the button collections from Mom and Pat are the best! 4. It is easy to get carried away and get way more buttons than you might need! 5. I love yellow buttons :)

So I have buttons. Lots of them. I just needed to get started. I sorted them by color, some into the plethora of otherwise useless too small tupperware containers and some into egg crates. Then I went and bought some plastic bins with compartments and I sorted them again. I started by making a gift for someone else inspired by a goodwill find. I cannot post a photo of it because that person will read this, but it was fun to do and turned out AMAZING! So now I really needed to get started on the ones for the wedding.

One night, I think during a football game, I started stacking buttons on the table in the living room trying to get combinations I liked in bright cheerful colors. Aaron offered his opinions as I stacked and re-stacked. I got a few that I liked, but wasn't sure so I left them stacked on the table - for like a week.

Last night, I finally put them together. Some of the stacks got rearranged, but some of them were originial. I focused on ones to put in Aaron's boutinierre because it will be more visible than the masses of buttons in my bouquet. I made replicates of the ones in Aaron's boutinierre to incorporate in my bouquet and perhaps in other places. This the outcome of Aaron's bout. It's not finished, but this is what I am working with. I am going to get a leaf and wrap the bottom in lime green. Imagine it on a black suit next to a lime green tie.

Then I got to play and be more creative. I put together at least 30 other button flowers for my bouquet. Now that I have them, I realize that all the photos I looked at did not really give me an idea of how to make a bouquet that does not look like a jumbled colorful mass (like it does now). I have some ideas and a trip to Walmart may be on my future today to see if they have foamy flower designing things.

I love how bright and colorful and happy they all look. I still have a million buttons, but I have some other crafty ideas for them and probably some more button flowers to make.