luvmytrio: Cool and Easy button "F"

This project all started when my friend Angi posted on facebook that she was in a crafty mood and was looking for suggestions on what to craft. My sister gave her a link to a crafting blog...which I started looking through...which led me to another crafting blog...which I started looking through...which led me...well, I think you get the picture. Anyhow, I wanted to give credit to the person with the original design, but I can't seem to find it. I thought it was on the original blog, but I searched her tutorials and can't find it. The original design was this cool fleur de lis. I really loved it and would have completely copied it, but the area where I wanted to put my button art already had a fleur de lis and how many fleur de lises can one area have? So, I made a letter F and I think it turned out really cool.

I had all of these items on hand. The frame is a cheapo that I bought at a garage sale for a dollar or less. The blue background fabric is cut from an old dress shirt that "shrunk" and doesn't fit my husband anymore. And the buttons used to be my Great Aunts'. There were 5 of them originally - Gladys, Vesta, Thelma, Loretta and Thora. We called them "The Girls". They all lived together, never got married and made just about every craft imaginable. At different times they (mostly Gladys) taught me how to do plastic canvas crafts, crochet, knit, and even let me try my hand at quilting one of their quilts (just to let you know, I can't picture myself letting my niece or my daughter touch a quilt that I'd already put hours and hours of work into!) So, thank you Girls for saving all these beautiful buttons over the years! As I was making my F, I smiled, thinking of them and wondering what they would have thought about me using something that they viewed mostly as functional in such a "frivolous" way.

Once you've gathered the supplies - an 8x10 frame with glass, a piece of fabric that will coordinate with the room (get creative - we all have fabric around that we don't use - it's called old clothing!), buttons (I like mostly white/cream/clear with an accent color added in for fun), and glue (I like Aleene's Tacky Glue) it's a pretty simple project.

1. Cut a piece of fabric about 2" bigger on all sides than the glass from your frame.

2. Stretch the fabric over the glass and glue the extra to the back. If the corners are too bulky, cut some of the fabric off, but not too close to the edge.

3. Print a large letter in a font that you like. I picked one that had thicker lines and that looked the right amount of "fancy" to me. I also bolded it to make the lines thicker. I used Microsoft PictureIt so that I could stretch the letter to the exact dimensions that I wanted, but you could also just play with the size in Word to get it right. (Be sure to take the size of your frame into account when placing your letter.)

4. Cut out your letter. Using pencil, lightly trace the letter onto the fabric.

5. Using tacky glue add buttons randomly to fill in the area of the letter. They should overlap and NOT line up. **You could also use a glue gun. Mine is so hot that this would have assured many blistered fingertips so I went with the craft glue. I also like that craft glue is nice and thick so it holds onto the buttons, but it doesn't dry right away, so you have time to play with your design and change it if you don't like how it looks.

6. After the glue has dried, place it back in the frame and hang it where you want it.

Here are my starting supplies...

Here's the finished product. (That cute little silver frame got repurposed during the project too. I covered the glass with some black paisley printed silk that I had from another project and glued 2 really cool clear and gold buttons on top.)...

Here's the "grouping" that it's a part of...