Some weeks ago I saw the cutest little soft trees at The Sparrow’s Nest (wonderful blog with many homemaking posts). I haven’t made them yet (still want to!) From her link I found the pattern for the trees at little bird’s handmade. While there I looked around (lovely site! I highly recommend it if you want to get inspired about crafting!) and discovered these adorable button wreaths here and here. I have always loved buttons — I don’t know what it is about them — and this looked so cute and easy. But I had so much so do for Christmas, then some other responsibilities this past week, and last night was the first chance I got to attempt them.

I couldn’t really get an idea of the scale for them from the pictures. I googled “button wreath” and found some other people had made them about 3 1/2 inches high. I began to look through my button collection and saw all the heart-shaped ones (one of my other loves is heart-shaped things), and thought — Hey! Maybe I could make a heart-shaped one! I Googled “heart shape” to find a pattern (my free-hand stuff, even simple shapes, is way wobbly) and found one the size and shape I wanted — I wanted this one to be a little bigger — and printed it off on card stock. The tricky part was making the heart-shaped hole in the middle for a wreath, but between measuring, my husband scanning and printing a smaller size of the heart shape, and eye-balling it, I finally got an acceptable shape. I cut the heart-shaped pattern out of cardboard. Then I decided I wanted to do a small ornament with a heart shape, but not with the whole in the middle. I didn’t think that would need to be as heavy as the cardboard, so I got one of those thin pieces of cardboard from the back of a package of computer stationery (I knew I had been saving those for a good reason! 🙂 ) for it.

Basically you just glue buttons on to the shape. I started with flat, plain buttons and added the shaped and decorative ones on top as I filled in spaces. I used a small hot glue gun. I imagine craft glue or tacky glue would work, but would take longer to dry and work with. I glued a ribbon for hanging it on the back, then backed them both with white felt (I read that some other used decorative paper for backing).

I was so pleased with the results!! Here is the ornament:

I realized afterward that the little Christmas tree is a charm rather than a button, but that’s ok. 🙂

Here is the wreath:

I just love the vintage look, even though none of the buttons are vintage. Some of them I’ve collected over the years; many were from little bags of them that Michael’s used to sell (I don’t know if they still do — I am going to check!!)

The ornament is about 3 1/2 inches; the wreath is 6 inches. The larger wreath does take up a lot more buttons, so I’d go with a small one unless you just have a lot of buttons you need to use up. 🙂

I haven’t done much of anything crafty for a long time, and I was delighted to get back into it with these projects. I want to make some more next year for other people. I’ve been enjoying looking at various crafting blogs over the last several weeks and excited about doing some new projects this year! 🙂

By the way, I’ve found all kinds of variations on the little soft trees I mentioned at first. My favorites are the ones at The Sparrow’s Nest, little birds handmade, turkey feathers, and Mississippi Girl, but there are many variations — there are some creative people out there! There is even a Flickr category for them!