By Recycled Crafts Contributor, Anitra from the blog “Coffee Pot People”.
I just love running across new ways to play with my art supplies. Have you seen Button Fairies? They’re so much fun to make and own or give away, and while Christmas may feel like it’s a l-o-o-o-n-g way away, half a year is nothing in the life of a crafter. These would make lovely gift ornaments, made up as colorful fairies (which already populate my own tree), or in whites, with angel wings.
The “ingredients” for these are simple. Start by choosing your fairy’s face:
I like vintage faces, but more modern would work, too, and don’t be afraid to use black and white. Those can be especially striking, especially if you add touches of color here and there.
Once you’ve chosen the face, glue it to something sturdy—cardstock, the cardboard from a cereal box, anything like that—an cut it out.
Now choose a set of wings. I like butterfly wings, and always have them handy in my sticker albums. They’re available as stickers, cardstock embellishments, or you can cut them from wrapping paper, magazines, or books. (Garage sales and thrift stores are my source for books and magazines to cut things from—the really beat up ones keep me from feeling guilty!)
Okay. You have the face, and you have the wings. Now it’s time to pull out the bits and pieces of “things I may need someday”—more stickers, paper leaves and flowers, bits of lace, brads, etc. I’ve used a silk leaf for my fairy’s “body”. You might decide to use a bangle bracelet, folded hanky, jar lid. You might even decide not to add a body at all, and go straight to the button tail, as many people do. The possibilities really are endless.
Arrange and rearrange until you have a pleasing composition, and be sure to add thicker bits, to give your fairy some depth. You can also use mounting dots or tape, to separate the layers and make them stand out from each other.
Now take embroidery floss or sturdy thread, and sew several buttons together to form a “tail”. Start by attaching the thread to the body of the fairy, then run the needle in one hole and back down through the other of the first button, and then loop through those same two holes again. Do the next button the same way. This will keep the buttons from sliding around on the thread, and allow you to space them out, if you want.
Add a hanger to the back, and you’ve got a fairy, ready to hang. Here’s the back of mine:
And my finished fairy:
As you can see, I covered the centers of the buttons with shiny three-dimensional sticker dots. I just couldn’t resist that extra touch. No such thing as “too much bling” in my book!
Want to get even more inspired? Do a Google image search on “button fairy” or “button fairy Flickr”. There are hundreds of wonderful creations out there!
