Button Dyeing

Rit Dye is known for its product's ability to color fabric. A lesser-known use for the dye is to color buttons; that's right: buttons. How convenient for little ol' me who recently acquired this giant mason jar of more buttons than I know what to do with. The process is incredibly easy; it's a matter of combining hot water, dye, and buttons. The website provides exact measurements; but I adjusted the amounts as I went.

The box is a powder dye which is far more concentrated than the liquid, so it requires less to achieve the desired color.


I only dyed a small amount of buttons this time around. And, I used only plastic cups and tools (spoons to fetch the buttons) which I didn't mind throwing away after I was done.


Voila! They are more pastel than I initially desired - very Easter-y. The buttons are beautiful. All the different cracks and scratches resulted in various shades of saturation. These three are my favorite:


All in all, the whole project took about 20 minutes. My buttons are now residing in the bottom of a wine carafe, surrounding some glass-blown yellow roses.

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I made a bag!

A beautiful tote bag.

This is a small accomplishment of which I am very proud. It's the first thing I've sewn with a real pattern and using actual sewing techniques; rather than making it up from my own little imagination.


Gather Here, a small shop in Inman Square, holds really fun lessons in sewing, embroidery, knitting, crochet, and crafts. A few friends of mine attending an embroidery class and fell in love with the wicked awesome shop owner/instructor and the beautiful fabrics like the black bird/cherry blossom pattern above. I gave it a shot on their recommendation and fully intend to return for everything else I can possible weasel my way in to.

Paper Hearts

As the post below states, Simon and I are engaged! yay!! He proposed on our 5 year anniversary and the ring could not be more beautiful. I am happy beyond belief : )

We're going to do a long engagement, hopefully getting married sometime in Spring 2013 - which is great, because I would love the wedding to be mostly DIY; and two years gives me plenty of time to try out some crafts.

Mostly, I'd like to tie in some vintage books in to the overall decor of the wedding. One idea I've had is to punch out paper hearts and scatter them around whatever we end up using as centerpieces. And what luck! Martha Stewart makes a heart-shaped paper punch!

Super easy and surprisingly entertaining to use. The little heart shaped punch comes in two pieces, a base and a punch, in between which you place the paper. Each piece has magnets which attract each other to prevent the paper from slipping or moving during the punching process.


The intended purpose of the punch is to make a negative design on the paper to be used - which is why it comes with a small border of dots. I, however, am just saving the would-be trash...and vacuuming up all the little dots.


See! beautiful! I have the amount of about 1/3 of a sandwich bag right now. I love the way they look, and it makes for a pleasant craft while watching TV. I hope to fill the sandwich bag and use them in the wedding in one way or another.


* I am using an old copy of my favorite text - Jane Eyre - of which I have numerous editions. It's sort of a twisted and dark love story, so the text on the hearts is certainly not gushymushysquishyloveydovey text.