Buttonly Loveliness

Whilst at Stitches trade show I was looking at these oh-so-inspiring books from Autumn Leaves, Designing with Color, Designing with Detail, and The Designing With Recipe Book. I think, quite possibly, and this is really saying something - that they do the best layouts with buttons I have EVER seen. Here's a company that's not afraid to use buttons liberally throughout their projects. Take a look at their new creativity inc. website. Here are a few of my favourite projects from there. this one, and this one, this one and here's another, and finally...

How much do you love them? How's that for inspiring buttonly loveliness? There is another layout in Designing with Detail which isn't in their gallery, but which inspired this card:

The main card is about 6" x 6", the one on top is about 0.5" smaller on all sides, and on this one I lightly drew diagonal lines with my ruler about 1.5" apart, then stitched up them with my sewing machine - I don't think hand stitching would work very well - or at least, not mine! - then on each cross-section I stuck a button - I would have stitched them but for some reason I didn't, I wished I had after, as some of them stuck out a bit too far. On each button I had tied a little knot of ribbon or string or thread - I like the fact that they are different on each one. Then I stuck on the other piece of card which I had used a rub-on 'hello' and stitched around it. I was pretty pleased with it, although I will have to love the person I give it to a lot as it took a little longer than most of my cards. I used little buttons from 'purplicious' & 'vintage' theme bags.