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Friday, December 2, 2011

A Month of Christmas Crafts: Project 1-Button Monogram


Hellooo everybody and welcome to the first of a series of Christmas crafts for the month of December!  This series will give you step-by-step instructions for neat Christmas crafts that you can use for gifts or home decor, or whatever strikes your fancy!  Most of the crafts I'll have this month I've created as gifts for family and friends, but a few are just too cute and I couldn't let them go.

So, on to the first craft: a Button Monogram!  I've seen a lot of these on Pinterest, and thought this particular one would be perfect for the daughter of a good friend of mine, who happens to be a very girly-girl, and loves the color pink.
I picked a very affordable, but not-so-cute, frame from Hobby Lobby.  After a few coats of hot pink spray paint and some sanding, it was the perfect starting point for my button monogram.

Next, I printed out the letter L in the cutest font I could find in about 300 pt size (this is GiddyUp Std from dafont.com).  Print and cut out the letter, getting as close to the black as possible, and trace (lightly with pencil) it onto some thick poster board, cut to the size of your frame.  You need the thick poster board to hold up all the buttons.
Then the fun part: start laying out your buttons inside of your traced lines.  It doesn't have to be exact, but just something for you to have a visual of where all those buttons are going to go.  I think it looks best to have all different sizes and textures of buttons, but you can customize this to whatever look you're going for.  After you have a rough idea of your layout, start hot gluing them in place.  You may want to use a low-temperature hot glue gun for this project, as you will undoubtedly get some glue on your fingers.  I glued down the first layer of buttons, and then started to erase the pencil lines.  Then I began to add buttons in a 2nd and 3rd layer, to make sure I covered all of the space of the L outline.
 Here's a close up of one of my favorite buttons, the pink glittery one, and the layering that it took to fill in the shape of the L.  I also used some jeweled brads that I had to fill in those tinnie-tiny spots that were too small for a button.
The finished product!  When I added the poster board to the frame, I thought it looked a bit plain (even with all those buttons!) so I took it to Hobby Lobby and they cut a mat to fit.  I thought the purple helped bring out the different tones of pink.

So, I hope you'll give this project a try!  My sister helped me with some of the button placement, and it's a fun craft to do with someone, or it's fun if you're hanging out by yourself watching some of the Holiday movies on TV.

I'll be back soon with another craft!

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