Here is a striking necklace made from stacked buttons that have the sophisticated look of shell or onyx beads. This is a project from the book Junk Jewelry by Jane Eldershaw (see the references below for a link to my book review and purchase information).[1] (COPYRIGHT: I'm so sorry to have to put this here, but I've had trouble with online content theft. Readers are welcome to print my articles for their personal use, but I do not allow my text or photos to be copied to anyone's online site. No one may use my content without written permission from me.)
Time of Project: One to two hours
Technical knowledge: Nothing
Supplies:
- buttons, flat, two-hole and/or four-hole, about 200 to 280 depending on how long you want the necklace. The book project used 225 buttons, and I went a little overboard with 273 buttons. The buttons can be any diameter you like, but you want the wider ones in the center and the narrower ones tapering off to the ends. See Step 1 below for more detail.
- Nylon covered beading wire. I used Soft Flex Beading Wire stainless steel / nylon coated. Its diameter can be thick or fine. It just needs to fit through the buttonholes.
- Two crimp beads + some type of clasp. If the necklace turns out long enough to lift on and off over your head, you could just use a small crimp tube to fasten the ends of the wires.
Step 1. Choose your buttons. The book doesn't specify diameter of buttons. The biggest ones I used near the center of the necklace are about 25 mm in diameter, tapering down to buttons about 10 mm in diameter on each end. (I personally think that mine looks a little on the clunky side and I would go with buttons that were smaller in diameter in the future, but that's just me.)
If you're making a bracelet, you probably want to keep the buttons all the same diameter without the tapering effect of the bracelet. Look for tiny flat buttons that are 4- to 8-mm in diameter because the wider the button, the wider the tube-bracelet that goes around your wrist, and a bracelet that is too wide can be annoying to wear.
Use whatever colors of buttons you like. The book recommends using buttons in varying shades of the same color like blue or white for a sophisticated look. Semi-transparent pastels would look good, too. I did the variation on shades of white, using mostly matte plastic with some semi-transparent plastic in shades of bone, eggshell, and transparent glass.
For contrast (and because I didn't want to run out of buttons) I added some semi-translucent yellow ones in a bright shade of yellow like lemon meringue, and some fake-tortoise-shell ones in gray and tan. I also added some plastic matte ones in light gray for sort of mushroom-colored effect.
Step 2. Figure out how you'll thread the four-hole buttons. You'll be passing two threads through the buttons for security and balance. The two-hole buttons are easy, one thread for each hole. With the four-hole buttons, if you pass the two threads through adjacent holes, you'll get a staggered, asymmetrical look. If you pass the two threads through the two holes that are on the diagonal, you'll get an even look in your button stack, which is what I did. See the button hole diagram at right.Step 3. String the buttons on the wire. Cut a length of wire twice the length of what you want your finished necklace to be, since you'll be passing the wire through all the buttons twice. String the button with the widest diameter on first, and then add buttons to either side of that first one that decrease in diameter until you're down to the small buttons that taper to both ends of your necklace. Tie a knot in one end of your wire and pass the other end back through all of your buttons to double-thread them.
As an alternate technique to this, you can cut two pieces of wire to equal length, line them up together, and start threading the buttons on both strands at once, starting with the biggest button in the middle and stacking the smaller buttons to either side.
Step 4. Secure the ends. You can add a clasp if you'd like, but I did this one long enough to drape over the head. I used two pyramid-shaped, white buttons on each side to taper down even further from the two smallest buttons on each end. Then I used a pair of flat-nosed jewelry pliers to flatten a crimp bead on each end past that. This left me with the ends of the necklace secured but not joined together. So I trimmed the ends of the wire on each side to about 4mm length past each flattened crimp bead, and then I stuffed the ends into either side of a crimp tube, which I flattened with flat-nosed pliers.
If you wanted to make a smaller necklace with some type of clasp, you would just have to pass the end of your wire through the crimp bead, through the fastening loop on the clasp, and then double the wire back through your crimp bead. Flatten the crimp bead and trim the end, and you have your necklace connected to a clasp.And you're done! Yay!
References:
1. Junk Jewelry by Jane Eldershaw, ISBN 0307405176, copyright 2008 by Potter Craft, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. p. 52
