Seussical The Musical Diamond Dangles

We get our design inspiration from all over the place and today's assignment was a super fun one for me ... to create a potential small ornament momento for cast members performing Seussical the Musical.  Great fun! The starting point for the concept was the shorter version of my button style dangles.

Buttons and Crimbo Crackers

This week I came across a new challenge site that I knew I'd love as soon as I saw the name - Crimbo Crackers - utterly brilliant.  To make things even better the themed challenges aren't just for cards, which is more up my alley, and the first challenge I'm seeing is of interest to me.  Buttons, hooray, I love buttons.  Although they make ideal embellishments in card making, I've yet to do that more than once but I have played with lots of things incorporating buttons and Christmas.

Button and Bead Garland

This is my new Button and Bead Garland.  Isn't it bright and fun?  What you can't tell by the picture is how lovely and tactile this garland is.  The variety of shapes and sizes in the beads and buttons gives it great texture and visual interest.  The garland uses 10/0 seed beads, a variety of  buttons, a variety of wooden beads, and paper wrapped styrofoam balls.

Bright Pink Buttons

Tonight I've been doing a little catch up on photograpy so I can show you another variation in the Button Dangle Ornaments series - this time a vivid bright pink.

Button Dangles in Red and Purple

Red Button Christmas Ornaments

For some reason, tins of buttons make me happy.  I understand why buttons off clothing I`ve had throughout my life would be a nostalgic thing, or vintage buttons with all their fascinating shapes and details would be an exciting thing - but even modern, bright, random buttons are such happy, cheerful little characters, don't you think?

Button Whimsies for the Christmas Tree

Buttons seem to be a hot trend these days.   When I recently came across bags of interesting and random buttons at a good price, I couldn't resist playing with some Christmas ornaments centered around buttons.

I love the whimsical shape that the random sizing makes, and they look super cute with large beads and pearls dangling below.  I had these super bright lime green large beads, so decided to pair them with a mix of red and white buttons in a candy cane pattern, a pearl for a pop of white, and carried the lime green through the beaded hanger portion with a mixture of red and green.

I have the same focal beads in other colours, so here is another version done in purples.  Seed beads in between each button keep a nice spacing that gives the ornament a spinning top kind of look.   I really like purples and pinks mixed in with my turquoise, blues, silver and white trees (where red is banned) for a colourful winter wonderland look.

Fun stuff and a great way to use up old buttons as a mixture of all sorts would look great.