Lily Loves.... Buttons! MSE Jewellery Challenge

Over on the MSE Jewellery thread we had a new challenge this week, this time set my Crafty Juju, with the theme 'buttons.' Unlike most of the ladies on the thread I am yet to venture into other crafts such as sewing or card making so I dont have a button stash (yet!!!!). At first I thought I would struggle with this challenge due to my lack of buttons but thought I would try and drag myself out of bed to attend a bootsale to get some so I could join in. However on Thursday myself and my friend Jo decided to have a drive to Blakemere craft village as I had been told it had a good bead shop called The Bead Trail. To be honest I was quite dissappointed with the size of the bead shop and its selection (I expected it to be much bigger) but it does do classes, which Ive been told are very good, and a class to learn how to do a necklace is £20 so I think I may try this later in the year. Whilst browsing The Bead Trail I found some buttons for sale (only 2 types) so was quite delighted as they were perfect to use for the challenge (and meant I could stay in bed this morning!).

I decided to make a bagcharm with my buttons, bagcharms seem to becoming a favourite of mine recently! I love the citrus themed colours of the buttons and felt this would look really eyecatching on a bag. I originally tried to use jumprings to tie all the buttons together but I found that they were strong enough to hold everything together and wasnt confident the bagcharm wouldnt fall apart on first use, so I abandoned that idea and attached them all to chain instead. It has had the same effect and at least I have confidence in the structure of this design!





I have also attached a very small 'made with love' envelope charm to the bagcharm to finish it off. I have decided to use this as a competition prize over on the facebook fanpage. I currently have 59 fans on the Lily Loves... fanpage, so I am going to offer this as a giveaway for when I reach 100 fans! If you would like to have a peek at my fanpage just head over to http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Manchester/Lily-Loves/107740405941247?ref=ts&__a=38&ajaxpipe=1.


This challenge has really made me realise how great buttons are to work with! So I really think I am going to have to get myself out of bed and off to some carboots to stock up on some buttons from now on!


Love Lily
x x x