I signed up for an ATC swap.  The theme is “buttons”. While I have a fairly large collection of buttons, but they are rather uninspiring.  Fortunately I had just come back from a trip to San Francisco.  While I was there I  made a stop at a Paper Source store (when, oh when, are they going to bring a store to Denver???).  The  three papers I used for “Bollybutton” reminded me of India, hence the name. Plain orange buttons never looked so good.

That  card was the only one that I used apparel buttons for embellishment.  Since the directions didn’t say that only clothing buttons were allowed I cruised around my studio looking for other materials that I could drill two holes into.  There were a lot of possibilities.

I found some polymer clay discs that I had made some time back – they were just shouting out “pick me, pick me”.  Since I had highlighted the discs with copper PearlEx I decided to brush some of it onto the ATC as well.  Did I mention that I love PearlEx?  A copper gel pen and some beads finished off the card.

Several years ago my hubby and I took a trip back East.  As we were tromping through the forest one day I spied some birch bark on the ground.  I was sure that I would use it somehow, so I brought it home.  I saw it in the drawer and decided to try to punch circles out of it.  To my surprise it punched beautifully with no cracking .

Also sometime in the past I hadpurchased a large background stamp that looked like  a grove of trees- tree trunks, actually.  Once I got it home I wasn’t sure what to do with it, so it became another one of those neglected stamps.  As I was going through my background stamp collection for this ATC I came across the stamp  and realized that it would be perfect for the card.  I used cocoa pigment ink and clear embossing powder for a subtle texture.  I’m not usually a beige/brown kind of  girl, but I really like this card.  It is very simple, but the buttons seemed to demand simplicity.

I also found some discs that were made of shrink plastic.  They had great computer-generated graphics on them so I got out my trusty hand drill and “voila”, buttons.

I used the polished stone technique on the card itself and the strip of green paper on top reminded me of alligator hide.  I enjoy this card because it has lots of colors and lots of textures.

The blue button  on this ATC is a computer-generated art piece that I laminated on both sides and then embossed using the CB “Tiny Bubbles” folder.  I also embossed the ATC itself with the “Forest Branches ” folder.

I  found a ball of crochet thread that had the same colors as the button so I punched holes in the ATC and threaded the thread through and around the card using the channels left by the embossing folder as a guide.

The button on this ATC is simply a yellow piece of corrugated cardboard with Stickles flooded into the grooves.  The yellow and orchid paper was another purchase from Paper Source.

I was sorry to have only needed 6 cards because there was still Paper Clay, Friendly plastic,  and other materials out there to be plyed with.  Oh well, some other time.  Maybe some inchie group will have a button challenge-hint, hint!

What is in your studio that you can’t bear to get rid of but can’t seem to use?  Think outside the box and “repurpose”!