dyed buttons

Honor your dad on Father’s Day by making him a special handmade card.  For those dads who love the outdoors, Cindi Bisson created this card with a winter woods theme.  She began by dyeing dictionary paper, drying it in the microwave and then stamping branch and tree images over it using Rit dye right out of the bottle!  For added texture and an element of surprise, she dyed drywall tape, available from home improvement stores.  What a fun material to add to any paper crafting project!  The buttons were dyed, too. 

Cindi is a mixed-media artist and the Associate Producer for When Creativity Knocks, an online craft TV show.  She creates a weekly Simple Solutions project and writes a Product Review for the website.  To find out more about Cindi, visit her blog, Fat Cat Creations. 

On to the tutorial:

Instead of a cookie swap this year, why not try a button swap! Ask your friends to dye some bags of buttons and bring them to a party. Then swap the dyed-buttons, and spend the evening filling glass ornaments. Dyeing buttons is easy and requires very little time. When making your own ornaments, colors can be personalized and color-coordinated to your decor. Handmade ornaments are great for gift-giving, too!

How fun!!

Here's how you can make your own...

There's so many ways to redo, refashion and refresh those tired togs that wind up in the far reaches of your closet. I'm always inspired by all the brilliant, crafty upcyclers I come across online that can deconstruct and restructure garments in a flash like a preview of the next Project Runway. Well, not feeling quite so ambitious, I found a way to easily update pretty much everything from Tshirts to pillows to even shoes. Just dye up some buttons, all mixed shapes and sizes, to create colorful, funky designs on anything in your style arsenal that needs just that little extra pizazz.