Olympia & my button/ fabric cards

Soooo... it's show time again, and this time it was Olympia, in London. It's a quiet show, not our best, but good enough. We decided to combine with my (Anna's) shop product and that seemed to go well. We took all my fat quarters, and some papercraft products and everyone seemed to love them almost as much as I do. Anyway, to try and combine the fabric, paper & buttons I made some cards to display. Well I was pretty pleased with the results...

This one is using Basic Grey Mellow..../ Bazzill Copper & a green fabric with buttons from Vintage. I sewed around the tree on my sewing machine (holding the green fabric in place with some double sided tape) and then stuck the tree trunk & buttons on with more double sided.

Here is a detail shot:
This one is using a lovely Moda pink stripy seersucker (I LOVE this), a big basic pink button, using the offcuts from the fabric to tie the button - these seersucker fabrics, if they aren't good for anything else (which they are) are perfect for this look. this is using purple ribbon with some purplicious buttons, I quite like this, it's fairly simple, but I'm not sure about the ribbon I used, it frayed a bit, and not in a good way!
I've made a whole pile more, it seems when I find the time I have to make hundreds as the time is so hard to find in the first place I have to make the most of it!

So, in time for the Stitches trade show I made up this little leaflet.  (I shouldn't really call it little, it took me long enough to design) It was mainly because although we can sell our necklace kits retail, I could'nt really afford to sell them trade anymore.  But I definitely wanted the shops we sell to to feel like they weren't being short-changed and could still give their customers instructions for things.  So, if you've always wanted to make one of our necklaces but felt that they are just a little bit too expensive, one of the projects in this leaflet will tell you how.  It's not quite the same as the other ones, as the buttons aren't quite so fabulously gorgeous and are generally a little smaller too.  Here is a pic of it made with a very berry theme bag:

I don't think it compares too badly with the original.  What do you think?

12345678910, 12345678910,

12345678910, 12345678910, 12345678910, 12345678910, 12345678910, 12345678910, 12345678910, 12345678910, 13245678910, 12345678910, 12345678910, 12345678910, 12345678910, 123456... how many time can you count to 10 before going completely loony?  It's a lot, granted, but it will happen eventually.  Case in point, the workers at buttoncompany.  Daily I see loopy behaviour from one or other of them (I myself, am of course entirely normal.) 

So why are we sending ourselves loony counting 1-10?  well, most of our buttons are packed in 10's and unfortunately that is a number too small to bother using on the electronic scales.  So, 12345678910, we soldier on.  12345678910, 12345678910....

The landlord's agent for our premises came round the other day because the landlord is thinking about building an extension, and we asked if we could have it, and are trying to persuade him to build it EVEN BIGGER than his original plans.   I don't mean to be rude, but she's a strange old bean, and I get the impression she may not be a button lover.  The reason I get this impression was her response to the fact that we needed more space for our buttons.  She said this, and I repeat: "How much space do you need for buttons, it's just bloody buttons, REALLY."

*stunned silence*

Now I admit, we have a lot of buttons.  (After all, a company called ButtonCompany, it's kind of expected).  You wouldn't think there were so many buttons out there, really, would ya?  WEll there are, and we seem to have collected rather a few of them.

 And unfortunately for my landlord's agent, although fortunately for me, and you, maybe, that's the kind of comment that makes me want to dig my heels in and say - "you think this is a lot of buttons?  well, wait until you see THIS"

So, we got a bit busy, haha, and just wait until she comes round next time, she'll see just how many buttons I do need...

Anna

Anna says I have got to learn how to do this!

So here goes - my first ever attempt at blogging ... good evening everybody ... I hope we are going to be able to provide you with lots of interesting things and a few laughs along the way... I promise to be back on-line from time to time but it won't be very often as I'm better at playing spider solitaire when I do get near the computer. That's all for now - Sarah

Hurrah! ButtonCompany has a blog!

Ooohhh, this is going to be good...  I have been thinking and thinking and thinking and then thinking some more, and I have finally worked out (i'll be the first to admit that I am sometimes a little slow..) that you people out there were just crying out for somewhere to see more of our lovely buttons, to see button projects, to talk about what you want from buttons and to just generally discuss the brilliance that is buttons...

So first up, for those of you who don't know, here's the family:  ( I will show photos of us all later, but I have to get appropriate ones first)

Sarah, the big boss, the head honcho, the one that you will have seen if you go to any of the shows, and also my mum, (you can all share her if you like).  

Anna (that's me), I do the dyeing, the computer stuff, the designing, and most of the blogging I guess from now on too...

Fiona, the one who knows all the random buttons we have and where they can be found.  She likes to say she's an oompa loompa, but she's got more than a little Willy Wonka about her too.

Jan - our Polish engineer, who designs and makes lots of the buttons we sell.   

This is the team on the ground here, but we will be looking for a design team to help us design projects with our buttons, both fabric, paper & jewellery.  So I guess any offers are welcome at the moment!