Button, Button

I couldn't post this before Christmas because it was made as a gift and I didn't want to spoil the surprise.  The cool thing about the type of ornaments I bead is that they are slipcovers.  If the glass breaks, all is not lost, and changing the color of the ball can change the character of the ornament.  This one is all about hearts, and it was made for Deb and Craig.

I started beading about twenty-five years ago when I saw an article about a beaded brooch made from a button.  Back in the "olden days," before we became a disposable society, women would cut the buttons from worn-out clothing and keep them in a button box for future use.  They recycled from necessity long before it became the popular thing to do.  My mother was a renowned seamstress and she made most of my clothes all the way through high school.  I, like a lot of kids, loved to play with my mother's button box, sifting the textures through my fingers like jewels, sorting colors and types, remembering a particular dress or jacket.  I inherited Mother's button box, a coffee can painted red.  When I saw that article, I thought of a unique tortoise shell button that came from a loden green coat my sister had worn and outworn years and years before, and wanted to give that memory back to her.  I found the button in the button box, and so it began.  I learned techniques and started beading other buttons, memory buttons.  One of the most touching was a brooch I made for a coworker whose teen-age son had been killed.  She brought me a button from his favorite shirt, and now she wears it over her heart.  From buttons, I moved on to necklaces, earrings, bracelets, bottles, ornaments, clothing...there isn't much that can't be made or transformed with beads. 

For a long period of time last year I lost interest in doing any craft, and then I "turned a corner."  It feels good to have busy hands again.