Button art that's full of heart

We had a busy day today! We are building new gates over the next few days so we did the final shopping run to collect all the bits we needed to complete them. W acquired a biscuit maker - we will have to wait and see how well it works out, but he's super happy with it at the moment. IDD, who is acting as coach and mentor for the week, also spent a happy couple of hours drooling over toys whilst they chose what they needed.

I wanted to unwind a little after such a busy day and decided to do a little button art. I have a large collection of buttons from various car boot sales and elderly relative hand me downs. In today's world I rarely replace or change large numbers of buttons - and i wanted to find a good use for them.

Starting equipment is my trusty Dremel glue gun , an art board from a pound shop, an ikea Ribba frame, and a bundle of buttons. I had to wash my buttons, as they had about 20+ years of collected dust on them, but once dried, they gleamed beautifully.

I marked out the edges of the mount onto the board and drew a light heart form in the centre of the square. With hindsight I should probably have just marked the corners with dots to help centre the image as the marks really didnt want to come off. I then played around for about half an hour with different combinations of buttons to work out the best pattens and how to fill the spaces most effectively. Having found a pattern I liked, I then proceeded to glue down the buttons, one at a time. Inevitably there needed to be some improvisation as the buttons didn't quite glue where they had originally been.  In my collection, i have some beautiful floral buttons with raised backs - I decided to use these to make a second level to the button art, covering the white spaces and giving depth to the design. With a glue gun, this is super quick - glueing down can't have taken more than 20 minutes.

Once the design was complete and the glue had cooled ( it doesnt take long!) it was time to assemble the art board into the picture frame. Et voila! Button art heart in no time at all. A lovely quick project for when you have an hour to spare. It's a bit like mosaic'ing with buttons!

I'll update this picture once I've had the opportunity to take a picture in daylight - promise!