Interesting pinback button crafts

August 24, 2010 3:31 PM

What creative or interesting things can I do with a collection of buttons and pins?

Over the years I've accumulated a fair number of buttons and pins - mostly the 1" buttons that bands and organizations like to give out, but various other shapes and sizes as well. I'd like to display them in some way, perhaps make something out of them - anything would be better than the jar they're currently in, hanging out with my loose change.

posted by Gordafarin to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (11 answers total)

On Antiques Roadshow, a woman had an old dressmaker's dummy encrusted with vintage brooches. It was amazingly beautiful (and worth a bundle).
posted by TWinbrook8 at 3:34 PM on August 24, 2010

Button brooches?
posted by hot soup girl at 3:36 PM on August 24, 2010

Best answer: Attach them all to a large piece of felt, arranged in some way (like by color, size, shape, when you got them) and frame it. If you're really ambitious, you can arrange them in a paint-by-number fashion so that you see a big picture from a certain distance away.
posted by phunniemee at 3:37 PM on August 24, 2010

Best answer: I've done two things with all my badges. First was to pin a bunch of them to the curtains in my bedroom - this looks pretty good but will be a total pain in the ass when I have to wash said curtains one day. The other thing I did was to buy a retro framed print (no glass) from an op shop. You know those super ugly seventies photos of fruit and vegetables? That kind of thing. Then I painted it, including frame, in a flat colour and pinned/glued all my badges to it. I did try the felt thing phunniemee suggests first but found it near impossible to pin them where I wanted them to be and all the same way up.
posted by Wantok at 4:41 PM on August 24, 2010

Best answer: I had a bunch of buttons, so I made a button clock! Just glue buttons over every one of the numbers on a regular analog clock. Make sure that the buttons are thin enough for the hands to move over them, though.
posted by estlin at 4:55 PM on August 24, 2010

Best answer: I've been working on a t-shirt quilt for a thousand years (made up mostly of band t-shirts) and plan to arrange all my pins along the border and hang it up somewhere. You could always just pin them along a big bolt o' cloth and hang that on a wall.
posted by leesh at 5:24 PM on August 24, 2010

Button Necklaces?
Here are three tutorials for making them.
posted by FakePalindrome at 5:42 PM on August 24, 2010

I put mine on the ceiling of my car. They're like stars.. but pointier.
posted by sacrifix at 6:03 PM on August 24, 2010

Just to clarify, Gordafarin... you do mean buttons as in badges, with a pin on the reverse side, don't you? Not ordinary buttons with holes in them?
posted by malibustacey9999 at 6:42 PM on August 24, 2010

Response by poster: Yes, to clarify I mean pinback buttons - the kind with logos and whatnot printed on them. Not clothes buttons.
posted by Gordafarin at 8:01 PM on August 24, 2010

My daughter made herself a bag with a long shoulder strap (from an old pair of jeans: cut the legs off, sew each leghole together, and then use one of the legs to make a shoulder strap). She then pinned her favourite badges along the strap.

It was pretty cool, for a then-11-year old's homemade craft project (despite the nauseatingly-repetitive Twilight theme).
posted by malibustacey9999 at 12:05 AM on August 25, 2010