Button Christmas Ornament

So I had a ton of buttons left over from the button tree I created awhile back, so I decided to do a button Christmas ornament! It is by far the busiest ornament on my Christmas tree, but I LOVE IT for that exact reason. Anyways, here it is hung on the Christmas tree, I had to hang it up super high so Tidus the Christmas decoration destroyer didn't get it.

To make this busy ornament you will need:

1. Styrofoam Ball - I bought mine on ebay for $5 with shipping, and got a pack of 10 6cm styrofoam balls.
2. Buttons - I got these buttons a long time ago and they came in a tub from Michaels, but you can use any  buttons you want.
3. Pearl headed pins - Every place has them I got these ones from Dollarama.
4. Ribbon

First thing I did was put the ribbon, to hang the ornament, on the ball with a pin. I then went back after and put a button between the pin and the ribbon so you don't see the ribbon.

 

 I then placed buttons on the styrofoam ball securing them each with two pins. Some of the buttons I stacked on top of each other as you can see in the pics above, other I didn't stack. Keep going until you have covered the entire ball. It is pretty forgiving so keep going until you like the look and don't worry about placing buttons over other buttons.

 

VOILA! A Button Christmas Ornament! 

I love making Christmas Ornaments and I have two more on the go right now. Stay tuned! 

Thank-you for reading.

-Kristen

http://craftsandnails.blogspot.com 

Button Tree

Don't worry I haven't forgotten about the crafts portion of my blog. I haven't been up to anything new right this minute (I have been busy setting up the Christmas tree and decorations), but I do have pictures of a painting that I did a month ago. I spend a lot of time on Pinterest and find most of my inspiration from there. The inspiration for the painting below was from this site http://fineartamerica.com/featured/1-button-tree-0004-monica-furlow.html. I love the idea of incorporating buttons in crafts and art.

Anyways, the first thing I did was create the background by putting dabs of different colours of acrylic paint and then blending them together with a paint brush moistened in water. I use water a lot when I'm painting with acrylic because it makes it easier to manipulate the paint, as well as you get more coverage with the paint which saves money. After the background was dry I used a pencil to draw out the tree. The next step took the longest amount of time (hours and hours and hours and hours, etc.), and that was all the dots of colours that make the leaves part of the tree. As you can see in the first two pictures below there is a mixture of large dots on the outside and small dots on the inside of the tree. The buttons I bought for the tree were all different colours so I wanted to ensure that the dots were also many different colours; I'm pretty sure I used almost all the colours I had in my paint set for this painting. Anyways, for the large circles I figured I would put my nail polish to and alternate use and used the the top of the brush part. The good thing about this was because it is made from hard plastic it was easy to dip it in the paint and dot it on the canvas. For the little dots I used the end of a pencil crayon.  After all the dots were completed and dry I painted the trunk and branches portion in black. Then came the fun part........................Gluing on all those wonderful buttons! Well I first placed them before gluing them to make sure I liked the placement. But after that I used a glue gun to glue on the buttons, but realized after many burns and having to pick off glue strings over and over and over again, that it was a bad decision. Next time I would use a different type of adhesive that wasn't such a pain in the butt (and my fingers).

I bought the canvases and buttons from Michaels. The Canvases were on sale for 50% off so they only cost me $25 for 4, the buttons came in a tub (a Tub O' Buttons) and I forget how much they cost.

Button Tree before the buttons were glued on

Button tree after the buttons were glued on

Thank-you for reading!

- Kristen
http://craftsandnails.blogspot.com