Button, button...Who's got the button?

I have a sweater that I love, but I lost a couple of the buttons. So, I thought, why not replace them with clay ones? I rummaged around in my stash and found the perfect clay mold—very vintage, perfect look for what I wanted. 

I pressed Creative Paperclay™ into the mold, then removed the casting from the mold. I used a round canape cutter to cut the casting into a circle. Then, the castings were set aside to dry.

I did a bit of touch-up sanding and filing along the edges of the pieces. To my amazement and delight, very little sanding was necessary. Have I mentioned that I'm not fond of sanding :) 

Then, I sealed the buttons with an acrylic medium before painting. I used acrylic paints—flat green for the leaves and a pearlized red for the rose and the satin white background.

Since these clay buttons can't go through laundry or dry cleaning cycles, I needed a way to attach the buttons to the garment that would allow for easy removal for cleaning. I used E6000 to glue the clay casting to a shank button. The shank of the button goes between the knitted stitches, and is secured in place with either a cotter pin or a small safety pin.

My new clay buttons add just the pizzzazz that I was hoping for.

Carole