craftgrrl | Button cluster pin/pendant tutorial! (Reply)

I decided I wanted to show this community how exactly I get away with the "button cluster" beauties I showed you in this post. Apologies for the mediocre/somewhat blurry photos in the tutorial, but hopefully I can explain the process well enough the tutorial can still be helpful.

A disclaimer: This method is the way I make my own. It can simply be a suggestion/inspiration for your own method or you can go at it step-by-step. Either way, the materials are easy to get a hold of and cheap, and the end result is adorable and a super way to jazz up outfits and your jewelry collection! If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them as this is my first tutorial and I'm not sure how clear it is. Also, please show me your own clusters if you make them!

1. Gather your materials!

You will need:
Buttons, of course! You'll want a variety, some shank and some flat to help with the overlapping.
Plastic Canvas, basically just gridded plastic. It can be found at most (if not all) craft stores in the latchhook/knitting/crochet section for around $.50 or less.
Wire, preferably with a very soft gauge. You're going to want it to be soft because you're basically "sewing" with it and things can turn very frustrating very fast if it's not easy to deal with. I love using this coated Fun Wire in 22/24 gauge. It is so useful and easy, I bought this boxed set at Michael's. I recommend it!
Scissors. You'll want some that are sharp (but I wouldn't recommend your fabric scissors because the plastic will tear them up) and, if you can, some that are smaller for when you get picky about trimming your plastic at the end.
Pliers are always a good idea when dealing with wire. If it gets stuck through the plastic, they are good to pull it out. And they are crucial at the end for turning in your poky wire ends.
Jump rings and/or pin backs to make your clusters useful.
Felt and your hot glue gun to finish. This is also optional (and not pictured =B)!

2. Get your buttons together.

You may want to spend some time picking ones that will look good together or choose a theme like I sometimes do. But you can always just wing it! You'll still want to know about how big your cluster will turn out for the next step.

3. Cut you a cluster-sized piece of plastic canvas.

4. Cut your wire.

I've found that a foot of wire is plenty ample for even my biggest of clusters, but if you're afraid you'll run out, cut as much as you think you'll need. If you make enough of these, you'll soon come up with a magic number of your own.

5. Arrange your buttons into how you want your cluster to turn out. You can even be like me and snap a quick picture with your phone in case you're prone to forget!

This is also helpful in figuring out how best to overlap your buttons so the least amount of plastic canvas will show on your soon-to-be pendant/pin.

6. Pick a button you want to start with and line up the holes of the button with the holes in the plastic canvas.

You'll want to choose a button that's on the bottom in terms of your overlapping. Here, I am starting with a flat button with two holes.

7. Push your wire up through one of the aligned holes, leaving a small tail of wire in the back.

Although not pictured, it is helpful to flatten the wire tail to the plastic backing so as to anchor it down a bit and prevent it from following suit with the rest of the wire.

8. Push the wire back down through the second hole just as you would a needle and thread.

Be very careful when pulling the wire not to let the loop twist like this. I've tried to circle the twist for you. You can prevent this by pulling slowly and evening the wire out as much as you can. When the wire twists, it can kink and knot, making it difficult to pull through the buttons and plastic.

Make it look like this as much as you can.

9. Holding the back wire tail flat, pull wire tight to flatten the button to the plastic.

This will finish the wire sewing on your first button.

10. Shank buttons are just as easy! Line up the shank of your button with a hole in the plastic that is right next to the button you just sewed. Push the sewing wire up through this hole and through one side of the shank.

11. Push the end of the wire through a hole right next to the one you just went through and pull through to the back tightly.

This picture is blurry, but you still get the idea. =/

Since shank buttons can have shanks that are pretty big and you want your buttons to be on tight, you'll probably want to sew through the shank more than once. I usually do it about three times, but if you don't mind a wobble, you can still do it only once. And you can always take the lazy way out (not a bad way at all!) and just add a little hot glue to prevent any wobbling and chance to expose the plastic canvas.

12. Sew on any more buttons you have in the same manner.

13. To finish off the back, pull taut your wire from the last button you sewed, fold down any humps you may have created while sewing, and loop the remaining wire around all the wire you see on the back of the canvas. Do this to reinforce what you've done and make it safe to snip the remainder of the wire away.

Now curl the ends of your first wire tail and your last and squish flat to the back of the canvas.

14. Your cluster should now look something like this!

You'll notice, of course, that there is a lot of extra canvas around the edges. So grab your handy scissors!

Use a pair of sharp scissors (that you won't mind dulling) to cut around the cluster.

Now grab a smaller pair and get picky, making sure there's no visible plastic peaking out of the little beauty you just made. Be careful, though. The little bits are prone to go flying, so snip cautiously. And clean up your mess when you're done!

15. But now you've got a back that looks like this!

You've turned in all the ends so it doesn't poke, but you're a little embarrassed by this wiry little mess.

Sooo... reach into your felt bin (yes, I have a felt bin) and pick something that will go well with your cluster.

Snip a cluster-sized shape of felt and heat up your hot glue gun.

16. Put some glue on the back of your cluster and press your piece of felt and hold for a second or two.

Uhh, yeah. I didn't realize just how gross my hot glue gun was up close. =/

17. Cut off the excess felt and you've got a finished back to your cluster!

18. You can either hot glue a pin back to your cluster now or attach a jump ring to any plastic canvas holes you have available around the edges. Or you can do both like me!