Yay, It Worked!

I am excited to say, my first attempt at handmade buttons was a success.  My nichrome wire arrived the other day, and I immediately loaded my kiln.  I only put in a few buttons, just to see the outcome and answer my questions- would the wire support everything, would the glaze drip, would the beads and buttons stick to the wire?  Everything came out great, and no bad surprises!  Most of the buttons I've seen on Etsy, that I've admired so much, use homemade glazes, so the colors and tones are much richer and earthier than mine.   But for now, I'm still working in the realm of commercial glazes that I buy online.  I am a long way from learning how to make my own.

So now that I have this new venture to focus on- to add to my repertoire of tiles and small bowls- I was trying to think about presentation and how to "package" them in groups to sell. Recently when James was working in the yard, he found a wire that was sticking up out of the ground.  Oddly enough, we followed it to find, it was buried but wasn't attached to anything at all! We pulled it up, yards and yards of it, and when I saw the bundle of four small copper wires insulated and sticking out of the end, I decided to save it and see if I could use it for anything.

Stripping it to get to the tiny copper strands inside, has been monumental and SO time consuming, but once it's done and cleaned up (there is some kind of greasy goo inside the black covering)- I've ended up with tons of these perfectly shiny wires snipped down to usable pieces. I am sure at some point, I will use them in another craft project. But I thought, the way these bend, they are perfect for threading through the button holes and attaching the buttons to something.

The idea for that "something" came to me the other day at Hobby Lobby when I was strolling through the scrapbook section, and found a paper punch in the shape of an old-fashioned price tag.  I have a lot of paper leftover from the days when I used to scrapbook obsessively, so made up a few tags with the punch, adding a second stronger piece of paper square.  I am going to thread the wire through the paper, through the button holes, and tie it off in the back.  When I'm done, I'll have 3-4 buttons attached to the card stock, ready to go.  I haven't made any completed ones yet, since I just have the one set of buttons glazed.  But I spent a day punching out and assembling a few dozen of these tags- one of those days where I wanted something mindless to do while I watched a few reruns of Bones on TNT in the afternoon.

I will post again soon when I have bunches of buttons to show off and ready to list on Etsy!