Summer Beach
What better way to celebrate a holiday weekend than to take at least one day and do only fun, play kinda stuff 
Going to see the movie The Last Airbender was a treat, I liked it so much we actually saw it twice over the holiday. I then dashed off to Borders to get the book, only to find it’s a graphic novel… can I bring myself to read a graphic novel? I can roll with the times, why not?
Simple Pleasures
An easy beading project was just the ticket for a relaxing afternoon. The bracelet was a “build your own kit” from Alada Beads where I just had to pick the colors; my favorite colors of aqua, sea green and copper. I had enough beads and components left over to improvise some matching earrings. Sometimes simple is very satisfying.
Aqua OOAK button bracelet
But that got me looking at the assortment of fused glass buttons on my design table. I’ve been designing buttons for a wholesale catalog. This, besides being a lot more time consuming and a lot more work than I could ever have imagined, has left me with a rather large selection of single OOAK (one of a kind) buttons. Looking at these with my freshly finished bracelet (above) in my hand was a short leap to the next project.
Button Bracelet
I raided my stash of novelty yarns and found some lovely aqua sparkly stuff, not too hairy – I don’t like hairy. I raided my stash of large beads and found some glass dangley things too (technical term, that). After a few false starts to try to achieve my vague vision, I settled on crocheting the novelty yarn with the buttons, beads and dangles not-quite randomly picked up and crocheted in the chain.
Button, button, who has the... ?
The yarn was mostly rayon and not disposed to wear as durable as I might like. In an effort to avoid strewing buttons and beads in a trail behind at the local RAVE (like I even know what one is, do they still have them?) I threaded Tigertail through all of the buttons and beads and cinched them up snugly to the right length. Adding a toggle catch with crimps was the final touch and viola! This would be a marvelous way to use any and all kinds of shanked buttons, I see more in my future!
Deb H
PS – we can see the town fireworks from our back deck, they were beautiful but Shadow (our rescue husky) did not like them one little bit. It’s a real experience when a 65 pound dogs keeps trying to climb into your lap!
