My kids love to run their hands through the button tin, spend hours sorting them into colours and designs, and then in the end they always ask “what can we make with some buttons?” My daughter had a wonderful mail package from her penpal of a handmade button bracelet and was inspired to make something similar - which in turn inspired me to do some research on the subject of button craft for kids - so here we are.

First - button jewellery - see this previous post on that topic - they can so easily be adapted for children. The one we received and made was simple - a piece of fabric - this can be some leftover quilt binding or a wide ribbon with buttons of your child’s choice sewn on and then tied with string and a button or a snap closure or some sewn on velcro (some help from parents required for this one). see the pbs kids website for a button bracelet tutorial for kids. And this cute friendship pal braided bracelet with button face. Extra idea *try also button hair pins - buy some standard hair clips or bobby pins and hot glue or super glue some funky buttons on the end using a hot glue gun.

Next - button mosaics - use buttons to decorate pots and picture frames mosaic style, or decorate boxes and containers. Some simple materials are required such as tile glue and tile grout - see this tutoral at stork net for directions on mosaics and this tutorial to decorate this box.

Then - button flowers - I love the post on Kiddley a while back showing how to do a button bouquet here are the original pbs kids website instructions. - but Claires tutorial is much better. (image is from button bouquet on craftster)

Do you still have some buttons left … get your little one to help you decorate a bag, or make some button magnets or even a button clock.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 1:18 pm and is filed under eco+recycling, home+children. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.