Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Shrink Plastic Buttons You Need a Microscope to See

I've been really really REALLY wanting to get my hands on , but it's not yet my turn in the library queue, and anyway my vintage button stash is dismal (it's a dream of mine to someday go to a garage sale and find a gallon jar of vintage buttons marked at something like 50 cents...someday), but I heard that there's a shrink plastic button project somewhere in the book, and I did have an old empty container of Kroger's pumpkin chocolate chip cookies languishing in the #6 Plastics crate on the kitchen counter (yep--we have a storage container in the kitchen just for #6 plastic. That stuff is useful!), so...

I punched a bunch of one-inch circles out of #6 plastic, punched a couple of buttonholes in the center, and the girls and I got out the Sharpies and worked--

--and worked----and worked. I had a plan to make some buttons around the alphabet for my VWX Alphabet ATC Swap over at Craftster (you'll see in a moment why this is no longer part of the plan), and Sydney seemed to greatly enjoy making entirely black button after entirely black button, but Willow did this funny thing where she made faces out of the buttons, using the buttonholes as eyes:

Ahhhh, negative space.

With more forethought, I would have cut out circles of varying sizes and thereby avoided the below phenomenon in which all of our shrink plastic buttons are now nearly microscopic--But, eh. It's crafting!

What fun is forethought?

P.S. Check out my shout-out in the Weekly Craft Round-up over at The Long Thread. Woot!

P.P.S. I think it's really funny when people rename my posts when they link to them--they're all, "I'm sorry, but I am not putting the word "RAWK" on my blog!" Justifiable, I think.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do you shrink them?

julie said...

Oh, good question--I'm going to write a full-on tute for my gig at Eco Child's Play later today, but the short answer is oven, preferably toaster oven but regular oven is fine, at 350 degrees, for about 2 minutes but watch them the whole time and as soon as they flatten back out after shrinking pop them out and let them cool.

Anonymous said...

I've been looking for an "upcycled" home-made button idea for my plastic bag crocheted purses, and this, I believe, is finally my answer! If you're looking for a way to make a personal, "green" difference in your local community, check out my blog at www.UrbanSustainableSociety.blogspot.com